


the speed of objects in motion

by killaidanturner



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Metaphors, Multi, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve is filled with Regrets, Steve is turning into Tony after Tony's death, Temporary Character Death, Tragedy, Unrequited Love, and it's really dramatic, barf, binarily augumented retro framing, prose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:10:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Steve forgets that Tony is human underneath all the metal, under all the red and gold. After Tony dies he spends time in Tony's workshop, goes through his schematics, his unfinished works. It's there that he discovers binarily augmented retro framing, and there where he decides he's going to finish the program so maybe, just maybe, he can see Tony again and tell him all the things he should have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Everyone has a bone to pick,” It comes out as a whisper, rolls of his tongue. Sokovia sits between his shoulder blades, heavy with guilt. 

 

“I just wish you would talk to me.” Steve is frustrated, beyond anger. He’s fallen into a state of tiredness, almost defeat. 

 

To an outsider they both look worn down, bird bone thin. Ok maybe just Tony does, maybe he is the only one with violet under his eyes. Steve looks to be the image of perfect, the only sign that this has taken a toll on him is the cracks in his voice, the longer draw of his vowels. How he doesn’t seem so composed with the slump in his shoulders. 

 

“I am talking to you, see this is me talking.” Tony points to himself before looking back down at the tablet on the worktop.

 

“You’re ignoring me on purpose,” Steve crosses his arms across his chest. 

 

“I wish that’s what I was doing,” Tony flicks his wrists and the image from the tablet appears in front of him and Steve. It’s a blurry street cam shot of a man with shoulder length brown hair, a hat pulled down to cover his eyes and a glint of metal shining from a fraction where his jacket sleeve had rolled up. 

 

Steve’s mouth parts, his tongue and teeth aching to say his name,  _ Bucky _ . He walks closer to the hologram to take a look. He studies the scene, the cracks in the pavement, the worn down street signs. 

 

“He’s currently in South America it looks like, Sao Paulo.” Tony pulls up a map of the city on another hologram. 

 

Steve feels a tightening in his chest, a numbness spreading through his fingers. He looks past the hologram at Tony, to his dark eyes that seem to have lost a lot of their shine. 

 

“You’ve been looking for him,” it’s no longer a question. 

 

“I never stopped.” Tony locks his eyes onto Steve’s and suddenly Steve regrets their recent arguments. Regrets the things he said during Sokovia and Ultron. 

 

“When did you-”

 

“Have the time? Have to keep myself occupied somehow when I can’t sleep.” 

 

Steve doesn’t ask why Tony can’t sleep, he’s too afraid of the multitude of the answers he would receive. Too afraid that Tony wouldn’t answer at all. 

 

“I,” Steve has never been one for a loss of words, for not knowing what to say. “Thank you.” 

 

* * *

Bucky is a distraction or an apology. Steve can’t tell the difference with Tony. Maybe offering Bucky to him is both. 

 

* * *

Ideas always sink into Tony like fish hooks. 

 

When he gets the idea to help look for Bucky he lets it claw into his skin and grab hold. 

 

* * *

The next morning when Steve wakes, he wakes to a fog of ice waters, blurry remains. There’s a certain sound to his lonely, a track on repeat, a record skipping. There is always winter in his bones, blue tipped and gripping. 

 

* * *

Tony and Steve’s lives are both filled with second chances. Both of them repeating,  _ this time I’ll do better. _

 

* * *

“It’s in the nucleotide of my DNA.” 

 

“What?” Steve is more caught off guard by Tony’s comment.

 

“To be this way, it’s in my nucleotides. Wait let me back up, nucleo-”

 

Steve laughs, cutting Tony off. “I know what DNA is Tony, and no, it’s not. You like being a smart ass because you can.” 

 

“Got me there Winghead.” 

 

Steve goes up to the mask around his eyes, gently touching the material. “You took them off,” his voice is quieter than he intends. 

 

Tony laughs harder than he should knowing that he got Steve to actually check to see if the wings were still there. “Ages ago, I just remember your suit from back in the day. I thought about keeping them on, making them bigger. Hey! Maybe next time I can make them actually fly. That would be fun, two big wings coming straight out of-”

 

Steve grabs a parachute bag from the shelf on the helicarrier and throws it at Tony.

 

“Hey! I’m not trying to die up here!” Sam yells. “Come on!” 

 

“You can fly!” Tony shouts back at him. 

 

Natasha looks between all of them. “Move aside Stark, I’m flying.” 

 

Tony goes to sit next to Steve, his feet drumming against the floor, legs bouncing up and down. 

 

Steve envisions his hand reaching out and steadying Tony’s legs. His fingers caressing his thighs. He focuses his eyes on the way Tony’s pants pull tight against his skin. He shakes his head once he realizes what he is doing and focuses his eyes on the wall in front of him. 

 

He doesn’t know where the thought came from, or the urge more like it. Is it a need to touch him, or a need to comfort him? But he finds it’s still there, fluttering like wings and waiting to be crushed in his hands. 

 

* * *

It took Steve a long time to understand the armor. Steve was always one to fight with flesh and bone, even when he felt like he was made of paper. The armor to him was just a cheap way to get out of doing any real work. It took him years to realize that it was the another form of protection to Tony. He was covered in layers of armor that came in many shapes and forms. 

 

There’s alcohol that comes in amber, gold, and clear. It pours down his throat and covers him in warmth. 

 

Crude cutting comments, a sharp and witty tongue. 

 

It wasn’t that Tony didn’t take anything seriously, it was that it was he was of dealing with things. It wasn’t the best way at times, Steve learned that Tony was aware of how he processed grief, “I don’t really, I just shove it down and bury it under everything else.” Steve thinks it was one of his most raw moments. 

 

There’s walls and fortresses his builds and to top it all of there is his red and gold armor that he puts himself in. 

 

Out on the battlefield, Iron Man streaking by in a blur, repulsor beams firing, it was easy to forget that there was just a man inside the suit. 

 

* * *

They land quietly, Natasha scanning the area and putting everyone into position. 

 

“We have company,” her eyes are quick as the dart around the crowd. “Eleven, no, twelve men.”

 

Steve nods as he follows her movements. 

 

“Guess I’ll suit up now then.” Just as Tony says it, the crowd breaks from a small explosion. In the center of the smoke is Crossbones. 

 

“Rumlow.” Steve says into the com for the rest of the team to hear. 

 

“I got him,” Iron Man breaks over the com. Wanda moves any remaining civilians out of the way as red and gold fly past them. 

 

* * *

Black Widow chases after three men while Sam grabs to by their uniforms and lifts them up into the air. 

 

* * *

There’s an military grade armored car the runs right into Steve’s shield as he’s trying to make his way to Iron Man’s side. 

 

* * *

He knows something is wrong, Iron Man is responding to commands but Tony isn’t replying. Tony would die fighting God to have the last word, this is something different. Steve can feel a void in the air. 

 

Everyone works through the battle and Steve pushes his way through the streets, pushing his way past civilians clinging to him, grabbing his shoulders, his uniform, his shield. Trying to keep him in place as they repeat thanks. They’re just bodies to him right now, but he feels their desperation as he feels his own growing inside of him, big enough to cause a chasm for all of them to fall into.

 

* * *

  
  


There was a sickness in the sky, it melted into his veins, sank down into his marrow and told him that he would never be a hero. 

 

Tony feels the pain in his head, feels the sharp intakes of his breath as his bones rattle and shake in the suit. 

  
  


* * *

_ “There’s a function in the suit, in case if anything ever happens to me. It knows to keep going.” _

 

Steve hears the words in his head as he see’s the strange movements of the Iron Man suit trying to fight off Rumlow.

 

_**“TONY!** ”_ Rips through Steve’s chest like a battle-cry, like this is a Trojan battlefield and the gods are calling for bloodshed.

 

* * *

Tony bleeds the same color as his suit, sinewy red. Steve can smell the metallic taste of his blood, iron thick. He chokes, his hand going to the back of his mouth. He can feel bile rising in his throat. 

 

A small voice plays in his mind; ‘ _ it’s a battlefield, we lose men all the time.’ _

 

Not like this. 

 

The face plate is in his hand, he feels his knuckles curling around it, turning paper white and thin. 

 

Pandemonium accompanies his grief. Back-alleys pay tribute to the lack of a heart beat and an aerial view of the scene plays out like a shakespearean tragedy. 

 

Dawn shatters across the constellation filled sky, teardrops and dirt cling to his skin. It leaves him fragmented, an unstable element. 

 

He thinks that he should be shaking with relief, that it should be like before and Tony will open his eyes, part his lips and take a breath. Instead he shakes with grief, godlike in its demand. 

 

An object in motion will stay in motion unless impeded by an unbalanced force. Tony is no longer a force, no longer an object in motion. He is neither and Steve is turning into more fragments that seem to be drifting away. 

  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That’s the thing he realizes, he always kept forgetting Tony wasn’t like the rest of them.

 

He takes the gloves off of the Iron Man suit. He lets his hand trace Tony’s knuckles, trace the lines on his hand. He looks at the detail of them for the first time. He notices a scar, white and smooth, across the back of his left hand, down by his wrist. He lets his fingers run over that spot as he sits next to Tony’s body.

 

The helicarrier is filled with silence. Steve can hear the hum of the jet, Natasha quietly pushing buttons. He looks up to her, her back straight and eyes focused on the sky. He hand stays still on Tony’s as he watches her, slowly feeling the warmth leave Tony’s body. He thinks if he keeps his hand there that it will keep Tony warm.

 

If he had to make comparisons then Natasha would be an iron fortress. She would be iron, steel, indestructible. She would be hardened and resilient. She would be the protection that people so desperately need when they didn’t even know it. She would hold whole empires inside her walls.

 

He thinks of her protective arms wrapped around him, her whole body shielding him. He hand squeezes Tony’s, fingers limp in his. In this moment he is more grateful than ever that she is his friend. Her ivory skin glowing in the dim blue and red lights. He sees her eyes downcast for a moment, her shoulders rise and fall as she takes a deep breath and keeps moving on.

 

Clint sits next to her, his fingers inching ever so slowly to her’s across the dashboard. They eventually find her thin bird like hands and wrap around them. He watches this stolen moment, the way that Clint seems to be telling her a whole story with the flick of his eyes and the slump of his shoulders, with each exhale.

 

She takes his hand and puts it up to her cheek, lets it rest there for a moment before she puts it back in his lap.

 

He looks over to Wanda who has her eyes closed, her back turned to the scene. She’s pressed against the side of the carrier. He knows she has known tragedy and grief, that it tries every day to wrack her bones and shake the core of her. He watches her still movements while he lets his hands memorize patterns on Tony’s skin.

 

He feels Sam not too far from him, his eyes on Steve every now and then. Warmth radiating off of him.

 

No one is speaking and Steve wonders if it’s because of the protective way in which he is sitting next to Tony’s body. How one hand lays on top of Tony’s and the other hand hovers over piece of the Iron Man suit, tracing outlines and patterns. He thinks he must look a bit wild, eyes wide and filled with heartache. That the blue of his irises are more of ice and raging seas then of calm skies.

 

Steve wonders if there's a scientific explanation to the silence, to the devoid vacuum of sound. If it's possible for tragedy to strike so deep that it crumbles everything around and takes with it noise, strength, and voice. 

 

He stops his hands from reaching up to Tony’s face, from tracing the outlines of his goatee, the exact geometrical shape of it. A small part of him wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, of course Tony would have everything down to a science.

 

The sickening feeling of never seeing Tony with stubble again, never seeing him come off a three day project bender down in the workshop creeps up his spine and counts the notches like the lack of days to come.

 

He feels the tears welling in his eyes, the choking feeling in his throat, and the tightening in his chest all at once. His hand tightens around Tony’s and he hears a bone crack.

 

“No, no, no, no,” Steve pulls up Tony’s hand and sees that his index finger is skewed to the side. The flesh there is starting to discolor, dark purple and brown. He had forgotten how easily bones break. He berates himself, thinking that he should have remembered from what he was like before.

 

That’s the thing he realizes, he always kept forgetting Tony wasn’t like the rest of them.

 

A humming tune of ‘my fault, my fault, my fault,’ begins playing in his head. He pulls Tony’s hands to his mouth, lets the cold knuckles rest against his lips. “I’m sorry,” it falls hot against Tony’s skin. There’s a small flash of hope that the warmth will somehow breathe life back into him. He looks to Tony’s eyes for movement, for a flicker of anything but there is only the shell of a man lying in front of him.

 

The tears come harder now, with more purpose.

 

It feels like the steel of the helicarrier is coming in on him, the walls bending and crushing down. His mind starts spinning as he thinks of the carrier crashing, of it sinking into endless blue. His chest heaves as he tries to catch his breath.

 

Sam is standing up, making his way towards Steve.

 

Clint’s hand rests on Sam’s chest. They look at each other and Sam knows what Clint is saying. _Don’t, he needs air, don’t crowd him_. Sam knows, he knows as someone who has struggled with this himself but it hurts him to see his friend slowly falling apart.

 

To Steve it’s the war all over again. It’s losing Bucky, losing himself. It’s the strangle cry of war forever stuck in his throat waiting to come out.  Trenches in the small of his back, gunfire behind his teeth.

 

He thinks that if he makes it out of this that he might start walking around like he has nothing left to lose.

 

His mind wanders to Bucky, still out there, probably on the run again.

 

Steve doesn’t know if he’ll ever find him without Tony’s help. Doesn’t know if he even wants to anymore.

  
Sorrow spreads through his veins like a disease, like a sickness he shouldn’t have and he finds himself wishing it would kill him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly i hurt myself writing this chapter. sorry it's so short but i couldn't look at the tragedy of it anymore. you can follow me on tumblr under the same name, killaidanturner


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wonders what Tony’s last few moments were like. He wonders if they were similar to his own. There was a terrifying peace to drowning softly. Tony had dreamed of endless black sky, a sea of stars. Tony tasted stardust on his tongue the same way that Steve had tasted salt. He flew to the sky for redemption.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> massive thanks to Emily who lets me bounce ideas off of her and gave me the idea for this chapter

The tower comes into view, gold glittering glass against the rising sun. Steve feels momentarily grounded, a source of familiarity. It’s different than when he was in D.C., different from when he had his own apartment too many blocks away. The feeling that surfaces in him is one that he had back before the war, and Steve tries not to get too lost in the feeling of home causing whirlpools in his chest.

 

Home. 

 

He wonders how he’s going to call it that now without Tony shouting from the kitchen about keurig cups and coffee stains. The watery feeling of his eyes threatens to come back as he remembers most of the things Tony complained about were caused by him but he never seemed to remember doing them. 

  
  


* * *

“We can’t tell anyone that he’s dead, not yet.” 

 

“What about his friends, hi-”

 

“I’ll tell Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey. The world can’t know about him Steve. Imagine what would happen. This is for our safety and for the team. We’ll tell them when the time is right.”

 

“What about Iron Man? People are going to notice when he’s no longer out there with us.” 

 

Natasha is quiet as she looks away from Steve. She crosses her arms over her chest, straightens her back. He watches as she turns herself into a fortress. 

 

“What do you know?”

 

“Iron Man will still be on the team. A Mark suit at least.” 

 

“You mean to tell me you’re gonna have one of his suits be on autopilot?” 

 

“Tony had one designed for this.” 

 

Steve feels the foundations of the building shake. He realizes a moment too late it’s not the building, but instead the imbalance of himself. 

 

“He,” he tries to catch his breath, “of course he had a suit designed.” Only Tony would prepare for every outcome, prepare for his own death. “You knew?”

 

“Stark trusted me to ensure that it was executed. For once he had a plan I agreed with.” 

 

Steve can feel himself wanting to pick a fight with her, wanting to ask her why she would agree to something like this. Why she would even let Tony design something knowing that he wasn’t going to be around. 

 

“I know we all thought that he was an egotistical asshole but at the end of the day we always came first, so yeah, I agreed to this. Be mad at me all you want Rogers but this is for your safety. If the world finds out we lost Iron Man, I can’t imagine what would try to come for us.” 

 

Natasha goes to push past him, to make her decision clearly known. She stops next to Steve on her way out of the door. Her hand reaches up hesitantly before touching his shoulder. Steve lets his eyes close as he leans into the touch and for a moment imagines launching himself out of this trajectory of orbit he’s been caught into. 

 

* * *

Steve feels like he’s stumbling when he walks into the room but he knows that it’s with a straight back and his head held down, eyes everywhere but anyone else's

 

“Did he have a plan for his body?” He tries not to notice the way his voice sounds uneven.

 

Natasha minimizes the screen of the hologram and turns to look at Steve. “He did.” 

 

Steve looks up from the ground and to her ever changing eyes. The way that they seem to change color the same way that she changes her hair. 

 

Steve nods, not too sure of the next question he wants to ask.  _ Are we burying him? Where did he want to be buried? Does it have to be in secret?  _ Steve can’t imagine a plot of land, anywhere on the earth that could fit Tony’s body. 

 

“For now we’re putting him in the regeneration chamber.” 

 

Steve feels too many things at once. A flicker of hope laced with fear. 

 

“He reprogrammed it to have a setting that can keep,” Natasha thinks about saying corpse, thinks about being clinical and speaking of things like cadavers but the wave of realization hits that it’s Tony she’s talking about and finds her resolve start to crumble. 

 

She flashes back to Russia, to a decaying room with tattered wallpaper and crumbling bricks. 

 

“Nat?” It’s Steve’s voice that breaks through, louder than it has been.

 

“-that can keep a body from decomposing.” Her eyes still hold a far off look to them.

 

“I’m sorry,” it’s out of Steve’s mouth before he can stop it. 

 

“For what?” Nat seems to have come back to herself as she stands up straighter and looks Steve in the eyes. 

 

“That this fell on you, that he couldn’t come to me to take care of this. That he couldn’t trust-”

 

Natasha puts a hand up and shakes her head. “It wasn’t about trust. Partially. He came to me for varying reasons.” 

 

“I guess I just wish I knew and know I have all these unanswered questions that I feel like will just keep growing.” Steve knows he isn’t acting like himself, that in the past twenty-four hours he’s been letting his world act like meteors are making impact into his surface. 

 

Natasha can feel herself biting the inside of her cheek until she tastes copper. She knows it’s too early to tell Steve all of the things that Tony told her, she knows that he needs to grieve. She tosses an idea back and forth in her mind, a promise she made to Tony. For once in her life she regrets that she keeps her promises. 

 

* * *

_ “Oh, so this is about me?” _

 

_ “Isn’t everything?” _

 

* * *

The space between Steve’s fingers seems to get larger as the truth slips between them.

 

* * *

 

He wonders what Tony’s last few moments were like. He wonders if they were similar to his own. There was a terrifying peace to drowning softly. Tony had dreamed of endless black sky, a sea of stars. Tony tasted stardust on his tongue the same way that Steve had tasted salt. He flew to the sky for redemption. 

 

* * *

 

Steve carries Tony’s body to the regeneration cradle. He’s careful with him this time, gentle with his bones and already cold skin. 

 

He lays his body down on the cold metal. The rest of the team stands around watching. He guesses it’s like a funeral in ways. That maybe this is how Tony would want it, all wires and waves, circuit boards and the low hum of electricity. 

 

Steve steps back from the regeneration cradle and looks at the man in it. He takes in Tony’s bruising skin, the way his hair sticks up from his helmet. 

 

“Is it customary to say a few words?” Vision asks as he looks around at everyone. 

 

Clint rolls his eyes. “Not now buddy.” 

 

“We should do something though, not now but after we tell his friends?” Wanda speaks up as she looks away from the cradle. She thinks about her brother, how he laid cold and lifeless on ship but didn’t get the mourning he deserved. 

 

“Yeah, uh, yeah we can do that after we tell Pepper.” Sam pipes up when the room blankets itself in silence. Steve’s eyes stay on Tony’s form, too off axis to put up a fight or give an opinion. 

 

“I wish Banner were still here. He might be of more use than me with this thing. Tony went over a few commands with me but,” Natasha runs a hand through her hair as she looks at the buttons on the side of the machine. “It’s fine. Nevermind.” She presses the buttons Tony had shown her and Steve tries not to hold onto the feeling of missing. 

 

Missing something in this equation.

 

Missing Tony. 

  
  


* * *

Steve lets his mind fall into a procession of memories. He thinks about the very first time they met, not for the first time that day, and wonders all the things he could have done differently. 

 

He hates that he looked at a piece of paper and taken all of his judgements from it. That the black ink on the page was gospel, some holy scripture that mandated Anthony Edward Stark was not deserving to be an Avenger. 

 

Steve almost laughs at the absurdity of it. 

 

Nat’s voice plays in his head,  _ “at the end of the day we always came first.” _

  
  


* * *

 

Natasha knows that she is not made of steel, or stone, or even ice. She knows that she is breakable, but broken bones heal back stronger and she thinks herself ivory, thinks of the importance of bone marrow and how the spine supports the rest of the body. 

 

“Pepper, it’s Natasha,” her voice cuts through static and she finds herself wishing cell towers and telephone poles would suddenly break.

 

* * *

 

He dreads winter, dreads the snowfall. There is something about the cold that doesn’t affect him, not his body at least. It doesn’t cause shivers down his spine. To him cold is a body lying in the regeneration chamber. Cold is clinical and harsh, it’s blue lips and blue veins. 

 

He thinks it’s somewhat fitting. That maybe they will bury Tony in the winter, when the ice has hardened the ground and is almost impossible to crack because Tony was always stubborn and hard.

 

Suddenly Steve has another reason to hate the cold.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Being around Tony was sort of like having whiplash. One moment Steve would feel like he could do anything, that the world was unreachable to them as he would throw his head back with laughter. That nothing could take away the crinkle around Tony’s eyes when he smiled. Then the next moment there would be the crushing silence, tension building in their muscles. 

 

Tony said radioactive isotopes. 

 

“I don’t even know what that means Stark,” Steve barked out to him as they came back from a mission. 

 

“Instability Rogers. We’re unstable. We emit this negativity until we balance each other out and become stable again.” He says it like it’s simple, like they should be these decaying things and science will figure out the rest for them. 

 

Steve liked to think of is as whiplash, like a car crash waiting to happen. 

 

* * *

Steve thinks that his veins feel heavy, that there are oceans inside of him eroding away at his insides. 

 

* * *

He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going but he makes his way to the regeneration cradle. Tony is exactly how he left him, lifeless. 

 

He lets himself wonder if it’s similar to how he looked in the ice. 

 

Steve pushes away the thought as he grabs the Iron Man helmet sitting next to the cradle. He takes is swiftly and leaves the room to go down to Tony’s workshop. 

 

* * *

The number of people who can enter the workshop are narrowed down to four. 

 

Pepper, Rhodey, Natasha, and Steve.

 

Steve understands more now why Natasha was allowed down there. He finds himself wondering why he was at all. 

 

He closes the door behind him.

 

“FRIDAY, can you please make sure no one comes in here?” 

 

“Yes, Captain.” Her Irish lilt cuts through and turns on the lights in the workshop. 

 

He sits down on the barstool, leather worn and cracking from years of use. He spins it around a bit, lets himself hear the creak of the metal as it spins. He settles with the helmet in his hands, his elbows resting on the work top. 

 

Steve looks at the details of it, the scratched gold and narrowed eyes. His fingers trace the lines of cheek bones before he makes a decision. 

 

He slowly puts the helmet on, hesitant of any security codes that Tony may have encrypted. The helmet smells like Tony, in a way. It smells like metal, oil, sweat. It smells like the cinnamon based cologne Tony would wear. Steve breathes it in, lets it enter his lungs and likes to think that it enters his bloodstream. 

 

The inside of the helmet lights up as FRIDAY comes online. 

 

“Hello Captain Rogers, how may I assist you this evening?” 

 

“Can you tell me what happened? I just want to know if-”

 

“Captain Rogers, Mr.Stark assured me to tell you that there was nothing you could have done in this instance. He worried that you might think that. Mr.Stark died of brain hemorrhaging from a blow to the head during the fight. I test his levels at all times and when I notified him he choose to keep on fighting.” 

 

Steve is temporarily thankful and frustrated at FRIDAYs calm demeanor. 

 

“Why wouldn’t he try to get out of the fight?” He’s trying to wrap his mind around Tony’s logic. 

 

“At the time I made assessments for everyone's positioning during the situation, if we would have tried to do an emergency evacuation it is possible that civilian lives and lives of the team would have been lost. In the situation this was the best perceived outcome.”

 

He doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead he takes off the helmet and throws it against the wall, watching it crack and dent the plaster. 

 

* * *

“Captain Rogers, Ms. Potts wishes to have access to the workshop.” 

 

“Let her in."

 

Pepper comes to him, his legs pulled up to his chest and the Iron Man helmet in his hands. It’s her gentle hands that reach for his and pull him up.

 

* * *

“He was always worried, worried that one day his mind would be the thing to go and I hate,” Pepper chokes, puts the back of her hand to her mouth, “I hate that at a point in there he lost it. He must have been so scared.”

 

Scared.

 

It’s not a word that Steve had ever associated with Tony but looking back now he remembers his wide eyes, the arch of his eyebrows, and the small shake of his hands.  _ How could I have not seen it? _   
  


* * *

Pepper keeps her back straight as she listens to Natasha. Nat tells her the plan, what Tony had her do.

 

Natasha watches as her eyes water, as her hand goes to her mouth and she chokes back sobs. 

 

Steve feels like he’s watching a scene unfold, like this tragedy isn’t happening to them. 

 

“I just wish he would have told me.”

 

“Would you have let him go through with it?” 

 

Pepper pauses before shaking her head no. 

 

“It’s important that we all continue on in public like this didn’t happen.” Natasha’s hand reaches out, hesitantly before she places it on Pepper’s shoulder. 

 

“Yeah, I understand. I just don’t like it.” 

 

“Did any of us really like the things that Stark did?” She lets Pepper see her smirk, her half quirked one that twitches her nose and Pepper lets out a small laugh.

 

“No, I suppose we didn’t.”

 

* * *

“I wish you would have known him back before, seen all of the changes that he had made.” Pepper tells him about back before the Avengers, back when Natasha was his secretary and the veins in his skin turned into circuit board wiring, black and lightning against his skin.

 

“You would have hated him even more,” Nat takes a swig of her beer and sets it down with a little too much force on the table as she sits up straighter, leans between her legs and looks Steve dead in the eye. “And you would have loved him.”

 

She picks at the label on her bottle, tosses an idea around in her head. “I have a hard time trusting people. Clint has helped me a lot with it, you’ve helped me, Sam too. I still have my moments but I would have protected him. I would have protected him the same way that you and me have always protected each other and I can’t help but think if there was anything I could have done. I’m not a dreamer Steve, I’m a realist, a strategist. I know I couldn’t have done anything differently but I still find myself thinking.” Natasha lets out a small huff of air, a half choked down laugh as if she can’t believe her own train of thoughts. 

 

Tony and Natasha had a very different relationship that Steve and Nat. Steve had always tried to understand it. Sometimes she would just sit in silence around Tony, sometimes she would snap back at him, fight him, yell and try to shut him down but always at the end of the day he could tell that there was a mutual respect for each other. 

 

That night when they’re heading to bed, Steve stops outside Nat’s door. “Why did you care about him Nat? Why did you never see him the way that I did?”

 

Natasha gives him a far off smile, “because I know what it’s like to regret.”

 

And suddenly Steve understands her more than he has, understands Tony more than he did. 

 

“He wasn’t like you, he-”

 

Natasha cuts him off, “he was, in ways. He was just trying to make things better. Granted I think he went about it the wrong way most of the fucking time but he did try and that’s why I always gave him another chance. I just wish I could give him more.” 

  
  


* * *

 

At night Clint wraps Natasha in his arms.

 

“I was too focused on you,” she whispers into his neck. She bites the inside of her cheek and doesn’t let the tears fall. 

 

“His death isn’t on your hands. If that’s the case then it should be on all of ours.” 

 

She lets out an exhale, her warm breath causing gooseflesh across his skin. “Maybe it should be then.”

 

“ Я всегда буду спасти вас,” he whispers into her hair. 

 

She falls into the comfort of him, taps a message against his skin. She falls asleep with, _I’ll always save you,_ playing in her mind.

 

* * *

  
  
In the morning Steve wakes to his hands stumbling with apologies. He feels like everything he never said is suddenly inside his mouth, waiting to become a choir. Waiting to echo through the empty rooms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fjsadfla don't worry these trag chapters will eventually be less tragic and i will eventually move the plot along more,,,give me time to heal from what i've done ok,,,,i'm in mourning


	5. Chapter 5

He spends more time than he should down in the workshop but to him it’s the only place in the tower that really reminds him of Tony. All wires and circuits, gears, and the smell of metal. He can’t bring himself to go in Tony’s bedroom so instead he stays here. Sometimes he sits on the couch for hours, sketchbook in his hand and blank pages in his lap.

 

After a week of this, a week of countless broken punching bags, of week of restless sleep and nightmares, he finally decides to start looking at things in the workshop.

  
It starts out slow, his hands lightly tracing and touching objects, learning their shapes and all of their geometrical sides. There's a wonder to them, he can feel the electricity buzzing from some of the objects. He doesn't speak to FRIDAY, not yet at least, feels as if it's still too much an invasion of privacy. 

 

He sees the arc reactors in a glass case, very models and some in arrays of decomposition, fried metal and exposed wires. He can't wrap his mind around it, having something sitting in his chest. He thinks he know why Tony kept them, thinks it has something to do with remembering how he became that way. Tony said to him once, "there's a reason why I'm here." He figures every day for him must have been a reminder and Steve wishes he could have told Tony that he understood. That even though the serum was a choice, that the ice was a choice, the future wasn't but there must be a reason. 

 

* * *

 

 He thinks about the way that Tony used to walk, as if the world owed him something. If Steve hadn’t known about other worlds and other gods then he would have thought that Tony was one of them, chin held high.

 

He walked around unapologetically.

  
Only if Steve could have seen the apologies blossoming in his throat, held behind his teeth. It was never that Tony was trying to redefine god or become one, it was that he was trying to find a way to be forgiven.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s not like there’s alcohol to drown himself in. It’s not like all of the amber and clear liquid staring back at him from Tony’s collection would actually shut off his mind for a few moments.

 

He fills a glass anyways, sets it in his hand the way that Tony used to hold his. Resting against his palm and fingers spread out. The thing about Tony was that he was much better at drinking than stopping.

 

It’s different from how Howard held a glass, barely a grip around it.

 

He knows that he shouldn’t be drawing comparisons, but sometimes the past pulls it’s walls up around him.

 

He remembers the very first time he saw Howard Stark, standing on a stage trying to make a car fly, and the second time with goggles around his eyes and his hand on a lever.

 

Tony would have probably killed Steve for thinking any of this, or maybe he wouldn’t. Steve really doesn’t know what Tony would have done. It starts to spread through his mind, from lobe to cortex and then down his spine.

 

He doesn’t know how Tony would have reacted. There were times where he thought that Tony would have told him anything if he would have just asked.

 

He lets out a small laugh, bitter and bubbling as his fingers tap lightly against the glass in his hands.

 

“If I would have just asked.” He tips his head back and lets the alcohol slide down his throat. It tastes like the wood of a barrel and cinnamon. The burn is still there and he thinks maybe if he can get through a few bottles he might be able to feel something, or not feeling something.

 

He doesn’t know what ghost he’s trying to chase.

 

* * *

 

In the journals he finds drawings on the side at times, drawings of a desert sun. Steve taps a pen against the page, traces the lines and imagines Tony drawing this. Imagines him thinking of the heat, of sand caught in his throat.

 

“Did Tony ever talk about when he was taken?” Steve asks with the leather journal held tightly in his hands. He didn’t imagine Tony to be one to have something like pen and paper laying about, to keep so many records and journals that weren’t backed up and protected by encryptions.

 

“No, he didn’t. He also never talked about New York, about that wormhole and what he saw. I tried, so many times I tried to get him to talk to me. There was a night where he was having a nightmare, I think it was about flying out there into space, and his suit came into the room trying to protect him.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“The suit tried to kill me,” Pepper says it with such ease and no malice, as if it was the most simple outcome. She looks at the notebook in his hands. “Is there a reason why you’re asking?”

 

“I’ve been going through his old notes and sometimes he would draw on the sides, in the margins. It’s mostly picture of a sun, sometimes it’s early versions of the arc reactor. Mostly it’s always of the sky.”

 

“He had his own way of dealing with things, some coping mechanisms more acceptable than others." 

 

Steve knows what she means, he knows about the alcohol. Knows it more so from the bottles stashed away around the tower, knows it from three a.m. sleepless nights. He also knows it from the way he tried to ignore it, the way it became a problem that he didn't want to take on. 

 

That's the thing about losing people, you start to question all of your actions, everything you've ever done around them. You start to wonder about all the unintentional hurt that you may have caused, that went by unnoticed and if you ever did enough kindness to balance it out. 

 

Steve starts to think that maybe there were more bad times than good, that there was more hurt than he intended. 

 

* * *

 

 Steve thinks that there was something that him and Tony had in common it must be fixing things. Tony was good with his hands, he called himself the mechanic, the Avengers IT guy. And Steve? Steve is good at solving problems, good at making things right and maybe it's not too late to make up for years of misunderstanding and miscommunication. 

 

* * *

 

Steve takes the notebook back to his room. He goes under his bed and pulls out one of his countless notebooks, crammed with pencil drawings and charcoal. He flips through the pages and goes to the ones that he knows where he’s drawn the sky.

 

He lands on a page of Iron Man with a rocket on his shoulders and shooting for the stars.

 

He supposes he has his own way of dealing with things as well.

 

* * *

 

He continues his routine of being down in the workshop, of waves and holograms, of learning and drowning.

 

Steve discovers countless works and theories stashed away in a file about wormholes. He knows that they weren’t Tony’s specialty but that Tony could become an expert in anything he wanted to. He enlarges the hologram, looks at Tony’s scribbled handwriting floating in front of him. He flips through the pages like this, looking at the shape of Tony’s letters and less on the actual context. He notices the way the y’s curve too much at the bottom, the way his v’s are too sharp, the titled slant to his scrawl.

 

He finds himself wishing that he could hold the sky, the stars and the heavens on his shoulders if it meant that Tony would have been safe.

 

* * *

 

“Tony had spoken to Jane a few times, they exchanged emails and she had sent him some of her work.”

 

There was so much that Tony did that Steve never knew about, so much behind the scenes stuff even outside of the Avengers.

 

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, “I’m finally starting to see why he never slept. He had about forty different projects going on and none of them correlate to one another.”

 

* * *

 

Aristotle said that the stars never moved, that they were a fixed point and forever unchanging. And so constellations were named after heroes, Greek tragedies, that sort of thing. When Steve looks up at the night sky, he tilts his head back all the way, strains his neck and hopes. But there is no star named after Tony, there are no Elysian fields. Instead there is a chamber with holographic screens, a glass coffin trying to slow down deterioration.

 

He feels bile rising in his throat at the thought.

 

* * *

 

So maybe his hands rested on Tony’s suit the same way they did after the wormhole. Maybe he held the same lingering touch of his flesh on metal.

 

He thinks of his silence, of the mute feeling he pushed into his lungs and the exhale of relief when Tony woke that first time.

 

He thinks he should have known then. He doesn’t know exactly what it is that he should have known, something along the lines of the word _important._

 

* * *

 

Steve remembers Sunday mass the same way he remembers what it's like to have his hands in prayer. He laces his fingers and closes his hands tight together, places them over the cradle and tries, tries, tries, not to look through the glass at the still form underneath. He keeps his back straight, his head held low, and thinks he should say a pray before he even asks God for whatever it is he's trying to say. He exhales and his words come out harsh, rough on the back of his throat. 

 

"You would find this ridiculous, in fact, I kind of do as well." He lets his hands drop, lets his fingerprints leave marks on the glass and if he finds his fingers drumming to the beat of AC/DC he tries to think nothing of it. 

 

* * *

 

 

Tony was always looking for a way to undo himself, then build himself anew, a better version. Steve finds plans, maps, twisted blue prints that talk about marrow from his bones. Steve holds them close to his chest and thinks not for the first time that he should have been paying more attention.   
  
  
  
For all of his formulas and theories, Steve wishes that Tony would have told him that minutes turn into years which turn into nothing at all when you’ve felt nothing but loss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i overthought this and ended up taking too long to post, my apologies


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony’s eyes had landed on Steve’s once, taking in the color and wondering if they were the same color as the ocean depths he came from not knowing that Steve’s veins had run frozen when Tony looked at him like that; fixated, as if he was working out a problem.

There’s this old saying, he used to hear it a lot in the army, though everyone has heard; what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  

 

Steve thinks of Peggy, of the ice, of Bucky falling from the train; his fingers reaching for Steve’s. He thinks of Bucky’s dark eyes, the clench of his jaw and the shining metal on his arm. He thinks of his mother’s grave, faded letters and grass that grows to his knees. 

 

It’s like world war two all over again, it’s tanks rolling against the cold dirt packed earth, crunching over bone. It’s explosions and tree bark exploding, cold winter biting at his skin. It’s an empty bar and empty tables and no Peggy sitting across from him. 

 

When he first woke, he had nothing. He had lost his sense of purpose, even with mission statements and files laid out in front of him. The subway train didn’t sit on the tracks the same way. People walked faster, talked louder, had less patience. 

 

Steve felt lost for better sense of the word. 

 

He tried living alone, tried going about his day alone. Tried. 

 

After Fury came Natasha and with Natasha came Clint. 

 

Then there was Tony and the smell of gasoline on his collar, a dangerous smile, and cutting words. Thinking about the way they used to fight feels like rubbing salt in a wound, feels like back alley brawls and a punch to the gut. 

 

But then he remembers how golden the sun looked against his skin, bronzed and freckles across his cheeks, barely visible and how they matched the freckles in his eyes. How his laugh shook his shoulders and his teeth shone white when he tilted his head back. Something like the word reckless crawls up into his mouth and he tries to place it but can’t seem to understand where it came from. 

 

He knows that the tower is home. As much as he still wants to say Brooklyn, as much as Brooklyn haunts him, old buildings and bricks and freshly paved streets. It’s not anymore, it doesn’t have the same feeling, the same desaturated hues, grass doesn’t grow in the cracks of the sidewalk anymore and cabs no longer have a star painted on the side of them. He thought that those things were what made it home but it was his mother and Bucky as well, with both of them gone he felt like he didn’t have one anymore, just an empty apartment with a radio that didn’t even work. 

 

With a tower full of people it was hard to feel alone. It was hard to feel alone with Tony always seemed to be there when Steve couldn’t sleep, that he was always the noise filling up silence. 

 

He realizes, as the sun breaks against the horizon, stone and steel and technicolor bleed together; that he hasn’t realized all of these moments for what they were. 

 

* * *

He stops, stops his routine of the four a.m. runs, of breaking through punching bags. He falls into different habits that involve late nights and coffee more so for the smell then it actually doing anything for him. He listens to the way the water drips and thinks that the smell reminds him of Tony making coffee at all hours of the night. How Steve would smell the aroma coming down the hall when he would be up for his morning workout. 

 

Whatever calls the avengers are getting seem to be fielded by Nat. She disappears with Clint, knives and guns strapped to her thighs in whirl of red. Sometimes she comes back days later, sometimes hours. She always looks like she has something to say, sitting on the tip of her tongue but her teeth won't let it out. 

 

Steve supposes that he should ask her what’s going on, if there is anything that he can do, but some darker part of him tells him that it was always her and Clint and they can handle whatever it is themselves just like how before he came along. 

 

He blames that thought on the lack of sleep, on the pent up energy that seems to be sitting in his core. On the thoughts and memories that always seem to be working their way through his mind. 

 

* * *

Steve can’t look at himself, his unmarked skin, without thinking of fragile bones. He will always remember what it was like before the serum, fractured knuckles. He closes his eyes as he imagines Tony in the suit, muscles aching, bones crunching, lungs begging for oxygen as blood hemorrhaged in his brain. 

 

“Did he know he was dying?” Steve supposes he’s asking FRIDAY but doesn’t think that he will actually get an answer. 

 

“Sir had protocols in place, I am designed to tell him when he is injured and if there are any errors with the suit.”

 

“He knew then, and he didn’t stop?” Steve is turning over solution, different scenarios of what could have happened. He hasn’t stopped since that day.  _ I’m a strategist, _ he repeats to himself like it’s going to help him with a too late answer. 

 

“Stopping would result in the probability of loss of other members of the team. We had calculated the success ratio if he were to stop and it was below ten percent.” 

 

He understand that there was nothing to be done but he still doesn’t _ believe. _

 

Steve looks down at his smooth skin, scar free, and thinks of the white spiderweb scar across Tony’s chest and how he will never get to see the smooth skin or the moonlight shine to it, that his hands will never get to touch it and say, “you’re brave for everything you’ve done.” 

 

* * *

He finds files, journals, loose papers, blue prints, dozens upon dozens of theories, algorithms, ideas of Tony’s all laid out before him. Every day he reads over a new piece, tries to learn the mechanics behind it, math, science. Some of it makes sense to him but a lot of it doesn’t. What doesn’t he researches, looks up formulas, thanks google and FRIDAY for breaking things down. 

 

The other avengers come to check on him, bring him food that he doesn’t eat. He hears voices blur together, a chorus of  _ you should get some rest.  _

 

He finally takes a break when he hears, “you’re starting to act like Tony.” 

 

It feels like there’s phantom limbs climbing out of him, breaking past his ribs. He didn’t think that it was possible to feel like he was being torn apart. Steve finally nods and lets Nat escort him out of the workshop and to his room. 

 

He lays with his face pressed down into the pillows and wonders if he could sneak out and go to Tony’s room, if the sheets there still smell like him, like overpriced cologne and oil. The feeling of limbs climbing out of him comes back to him ten fold. He presses his face further in the pillows and prays to whatever is out there that sleep takes him soon. 

 

* * *

He carries memories the same way he carries his shield. 

 

Memories, he supposes that’s where the idea starts. 

 

He lets a memory play over in his mind as he sits in the workshop, how he stood out in the hallway and looked through the glass. Watching Tony from afar, always from afar, always with a boundary between them. 

 

Steve lets his hands trail over the glasses sitting on the table, the same way that he saw Tony’s, slow and with purpose. He looked at those hands and wondered how they would feel on his touch starved skin. 

 

He watched the way that bruises faded on Tony’s tanned skin, violent purple to garish yellow. 

 

Tony would be so wrapped up in whatever he was working on that he wouldn’t notice that Steve would be right outside, or sometimes even on the couch, his eyes watching and taking in every detail. 

 

Tony’s eyes had landed on Steve’s once, taking in the color and wondering if they were the same color as the ocean depths he came from not knowing that Steve’s veins had run frozen when Tony looked at him like that; fixated, as if he was working out a problem. 

 

He snaps back to reality when he asks FRIDAY about the glasses, “what were these called?”

 

“Binarily Augmented Retro Framing. B.A.R.F. It was Sir’s most recent project and one that he was very proud of.”

 

“What do they do?”

 

“Alter memories so that the person may relive the memory and have the outcome they wish. They are not finished, Sir was working on them and was going to present them at opening commencement at MIT.” 

 

Steve holds up the glasses, pulls them close to his face but not actually on them, just close enough so he can look out through the lenses. 

 

“What were you trying to fix?” Steve whispers, glasses still in his hands. He doesn’t know how long he sits for.

 

* * *

 

Pepper is in and out of the tower, in and out of their lives. She stands tall every time Steve sees her, chin held high and not a hair out of place. Steve wonders when she stops, when she lets her shoulders slump and lets herself breathe. 

 

She spends more time at the tower then ever before and Steve assumes it's for the same reasons he sits in Tony’s workshop, that he’s still trying to feel like Tony is in there somewhere. 

 

He supposes it’s also because she’s worried, he can see it in the darkening shadows under her eyes. She spends her little spare time telling funny stories about Tony, anecdotes and things that Steve wished he had seen.

 

“I guess you saw a different side to Tony than the rest of us,” Steve strains a smile.

 

Pepper puts a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t. He was always there Steve, hidden under all of his sarcasm and bullshit, he was there.” Pepper can feel her heart breaking, can feel the muscles on her face trying to force a smile as well. She knows it’s not the time, but will it ever be the time? “Our worlds are always going to be filled with “if’s” now Steve. What if we had done something differently? What if we had said something? Tony was always waiting for you, waiting for you to want to know him. You knew him better than most, don’t get me wrong, but not the way he wanted.”

 

Steve can feel the lump in his throat growing bigger. “I-”, he doesn’t know where he’s trying to go with the statement. 

 

Pepper shakes her head lightly. “It’s ok. Tony cared about you, you should remember that while we all live with these ‘what if’s’.”

 

“Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer, it’s kind of personal.” 

 

“I can’t imagine there would be anything that you would ask that would make me not want to answer.” 

 

Steve tries to figure out the best way to phrase it. He settles on this, “what was it like to love Tony?”

 

He doesn’t know why he asked though he supposes he does, he’s just trying to catch up with himself. 

 

Pepper’s mouth opens slightly before she closes it and this time smiles genuinely at Steve. Her eyes sparkle with fresh tears before she looks down at the floor and runs a hand over her slicked back hair. 

 

“Couldn’t have asked a simpler question?” She doesn’t sound upset, a little big amused, somewhat whimsical.

 

“I really am sorry, you don’t have to answer. You can forget that I asked, it was inappropriate.”

 

“Steve, Steve, it’s alright.” Her hand is back on his arm and suddenly he realizes why Tony was so enamoured with her. Why he gravitated towards her. Even under the crushing weight of the circumstances she stands strong and willing to comfort others and suddenly Steve feels very selfish. 

 

“The thing is, everyone is in love with Tony, just a little bit and in each their own way. It was having Tony love me back because I knew he didn’t love easily but when we were happy it was the greatest feeling in the world. Being with Tony was him letting you into his world, letting you see him at his not best moments and there were more of those than I care to admit but I would take all of them again, every single day if it meant that I could have him back. I would take the late hours, the not sleeping for days, forgetting to call, forgetting my birthday, forgetting that I’m allergic to strawberries. I would have all of that back just to see him come busting into a meeting late and wowing everyone in the room, to come knocking on my door at three a.m. because he doesn’t know what day or time it is but he had an idea and he thought of coming to tell me, because I was someone he cared about. He had a way of making people feel special and important and I hate that it was taken away from so many people. That he’ll never share his creations with the world again.” Pepper pauses to wipe away at her cheeks. 

 

“We’ll never hear his laugh, never hear his smart ass comments. Tony spent the last few years of his life trying to make amends and even though he had saved countless lives, he never forgave himself for what had happened years ago, when Stark Industries sold weapons. Never forgave himself for his dad’s mistakes, for his own mistakes. He held onto too much and I can only hope that he finally has peace. To answer your question, being in love with Tony was very difficult but worth every moment of it.”

 

* * *

This is how ideas spread, like a virus, unstoppable.

 

* * *

“Is there a way to make B.A.R.F. target not just the most traumatic memories someone has but any of them that they wish to change?”

 

Pepper side eyes him and she thinks that he’s more like Tony that she originally thought.

 

“I don’t know the workings behind it but I would assume that there is a way. Something like that though would take a genius, and probably a lot of money.”

 

Steve nods his head in understanding, his mind trying to come up with a different solution.

 

“I guess it’s a good thing that Tony left a lot of that to me.” She puts her hand over Steve’s and sees the new found hope in his eyes. 

 

“I want to,” Steve lets out a breath, closes his eyes, “I want to finish the last project that he was working on.” 

 

Pepper knows that B.A.R.F. isn’t the best way to heal, she’s already run over in her mind all of the things wrong with it. She thinks of the addictive nature it promises, being able to fix any scenario, anything that someone didn’t want. 

 

She feels like she owes this to Steve, that she owes him the missed moments somehow, that the universe does at least and she has a way to fix it. A little piece of her feels like she owes this to Tony as well because she knows that Tony could deny Steve nothing. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my fave chapter so far, i feel at peace with it


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tries to imagine what it would have been like to kiss Tony. He thinks it would have been like drinking honey whiskey, like swallowing a summer day at dusk, right when the air is starting to cool but still wraps you in warmth.

 

“It’s ok you know,” Natasha’s hands squeeze his shoulder, firm and reassuring. 

 

He’s scared to speak, scared that his voice won't sound as strong. 

 

He hasn’t gone to see Peggy, realizes that every time he looks at her he remembers a year ago, remembers seventy years ago, remembers Wanda’s fingers against his skull and Peggy’s fingers laced with his. The false promise it gave him. 

 

If his life was told in a story it would be in three parts, each part a name of a person, and each one ending with the same theme; too late. 

 

He knows what Peggy will say, that she will tell him he can still search for Bucky. He imagines looking into her eyes, the same steadiness that they have always held. 

 

He knows that he can’t look at her and tell her that he can’t do it, not without Tony, not without the resources. Not without Tony’s fingers tapping against the quinjet control panel as he looks over at Steve and says,  _ “don’t you know this song? It’s a classic.”  _

 

So he can’t bear the thought to go see Peggy, not when it’s still 1942 in another universe, not when a part of him still wishes he had them both. 

 

_ “Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice.”  _ It plays like a broken record except this time Tony isn’t there to fix it.

 

“Which part?” He finally says because he can’t say that it is ok, that any of this is ok. 

 

“To say that you miss him.” Her fingers pinch his skin, the dip of his shoulder as if she can see the guilt and pain resting there. 

 

“You know I do. I think everyone knows that I do. I’m tired of losing people. I know it sounds selfish-”

 

Natasha cuts him off, “it doesn’t. It doesn’t sound selfish. We were looking for Barnes when this happened. We were trying to do something good and-”

 

“That’s the thing. We were doing what I wanted. Tony was doing it for me. I can’t even call him reckless, you know that? He sacrificed himself for all of us and all I can think about is how I watched Buck fall from the train, how I tried to save myself first.”

 

There it is, unresolved and hanging above them.

 

“You can’t blame yourself for that still. You can’t blame yourself for this. If you keep blaming yourself it will consume you, it will tear you apart. Don’t let it works itself inside of you, you won't be able to recognize who you are anymore.” 

 

Steve has a rebuttal sitting on his tongue, one about Bucky and how that is what he must go through every day. If anyone knows what it’s like to have your mind taken from you, it’s Natasha. Natasha with her silent movements and the way she’s always looking over her shoulders. 

 

“Everyone deals in different ways. Some of us look for redemption, a way to take off some of the guilt.”

 

* * *

“The plans for the glasses were set so you can watch the memory play out but have that version of you change the sequence of events.” FRIDAYS programmed accent fills the space around him.

 

“What if we work on a way to have it so instead of watching it, you’re reliving it.”

 

“Sir did have a few different versions drawn up and that would be possible and the probability of it quicker to finish.” 

 

For a brief moment Steve thinks of the tight lipped disapproval of Natasha, her quiet whispers with Pepper, but quickly pushes them all to the side. 

 

“Let’s get started.”

 

* * *

Steve grew up being accustomed to loud noises, the constant of Brooklyn with it’s honking horns and shattering glass, hell even neighbors shouting out their windows at all hours of the day to talk to someone across the alley. It made the war just the smallest amount easier to get used to, to the noise of mines snapping trees, breaking bones. To the sound a gun makes, how a body exhales when a trigger is pulled. Even decades apart, how a man dying still seems to scream the same way. 

 

The future isn’t what bothers him, it isn’t so much that things have changed, it was more so that they haven’t. That the world is even noisier, even louder, that Peggy Carter and Bucky Barnes went on in it, that they adapted to it. That Peggy tried to change it, at times changed herself in the process, and that if Bucky recognized a scream, recognized the way that footfalls hit the earth when a soldier is marching like a drum beat, recognized that the fear in his own eyes was real, then it was erased. 

 

He gets it, in the workshop, why Tony spent so much time down there. It was a way to drown it all out. That down here the noises don’t sound like war, they don’t sound like bloodshed and another body count. That with the whir of a computer he could imagine that he could focus on where he is, that for Steve there is no cold forest, no trench to sit in, and that for Tony there was no desert heat and blood soaked sand.

 

“You’re starting to act like him,” he lets Nat’s words play in his head, lets them sink in as he tinkers, as he disassembles, reassembles. As he runs mathematics, theories, talks to FRIDAY and forgets what day of the week it is. At least down here, it’s a different kind of noise, one that lets the silence creep in and work its way around. 

 

He tries to remember the last time he heard silence and thinks that it must be when the plane crashed into the water, that it must be when ice filled his ears and his veins.

 

This time his body doesn’t shudder. 

 

* * *

It was a harrowing almost maddening thing, to be around Tony for so long and to feel like he didn’t know him at all. 

 

Steve avoids the room with the regeneration cradle like it contains a virus, like it’s the key to an outbreak. Avoids it like a draft in a war he never wanted to be in. 

 

 

* * *

 

Creating, that is what Tony was good at. Creating things, transforming ideas to come to life in front of everyone. 

 

“What is it?” Sam asks as he sits across from Steve. Sam and his ever watchful gaze and worrying eyes, with his steady hands and strong spine. 

 

He pulls his eyebrows together, lines in his forehead appearing. “He was spending so much time on these glasses, throwing so much money into them and I had no idea. And for what? He was living with things that I couldn’t understand, that he didn’t want me to and I just wish,” Steve pauses, lets out a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I guess none of that really matters now. I just know that this is what I should be doing.”

 

Sam nods his head slowly. “I get it man, I do. I’ve always stood by you, never questioned a thing. You’re firm in your beliefs and I would never do anything to sway them. I just,” Sam reaches out, lets his hand rest on Steve’s, “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

 

Steve’s eyes go out of focus, blur around the edges as he looks at his own hand. His hands that have never been used to create but instead used to act out, that are filled with a screaming silence. He waits to hear Sam walk away before he blinks. 

 

* * *

Something about miracles and God cross through his mind. It’s not a far stretch, nothing is now a days. Not when Steve himself is living proof. 

 

These glasses were a way to help Tony, to fix something he couldn’t fix himself, and maybe they can fix Steve. Maybe they can finally put a stop to years of tragedy and grief.

 

* * *

He’s hesitant when he slides the glasses on, worried about what he might see, how he might react. 

 

In the memory he sees Tony standing there, one hand with the glove from his current Mark suit, one hand free. He looks at this fingertips, the way they drum against the worktop. He wears regret like a glove, carries it in the crook of his neck and Steve hates that he refused to see it all before. 

 

“Hey Cap,” 

 

Steve closes his eyes as he watches the memory unfold. Watches as he walks up close to Tony, how his hesitant hands reach out. 

 

Steve rips off the glasses, finds himself bending over and trying to catch his breath. 

 

* * *

Steve knows loss, knows it like the lines in his hand. He knows what it’s like to love and have it ripped from you suddenly. But for all of his years of grief, how sadness used to creep up on him and lock him in with strong bars, it could have never prepared him for this. 

 

He loved Peggy, loved Bucky, both in different ways. He loved Peggy for her strength, her resilience, how she would never back down. He loved Bucky for his kind eyes and soft smile, how at the end of the day he was always there for Steve. The casual way he would sit in Steve’s kitchen back in Brooklyn, feet spread out in front of him, legs apart and a lazy grin on his face. 

 

He had lost Peggy twice, Bucky three times now. He knew the weight that loss carried, how it fits like a bag packed for war.

 

“I didn’t know,” Steve whispers to himself as his fingers run across a picture of Tony. He lets his finger trace the outline of him, then the shape of his lips, his eyes. He takes the picture and presses it to his forehead. “I didn’t know that I loved you.”

 

He thinks of all the things he tried when he was taken from the ice. How he tried living alone, tried staying busy, tried lavender, new shampoos, made a journal of recommendations, and drawing, and learning new languages, tried TV shows and movies, romances played out in technicolor and all of the horrible things that happen to those in love and how none of them could compare to this.

 

It’s all of the things he could have, should have, all of the if’s piling up around him and closing him in. He feels as he’s drowning all over again, cold filling his lungs and ice enclosing him in. 

 

He finds himself on the ground, curled up on his side with his breathing increased, his hands shaking and his lips going numb as his vision blurs.

 

It’s Sam that finds him like this. Sam that talks him down, talks him out, talks his breathing back to being more even. Sam who has a glass of water and soothing hands running down his back.

 

“FRIDAY told me you were having an anxiety attack.” Sam’s words are soft as he takes a step back to let Steve breathe.

 

They sit there in silence until Sam speaks again. “You know I had a hard time after Riley died.”

 

“I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t know if this is like that.” Steve’s voice is barely a whisper, worried that he might offend Sam but his eyes and body are tired.

 

“Like what?” 

 

“Did you love him?”

 

“Riley? Of course I loved him.”

 

Steve pauses, picks at the cuticle around one of his nails before looking up at Sam. “We’re you in love with him?” 

 

Everything slots into place for Sam, his hands reaching out to touch Steve’s shoulders. “Yeah, I was. It may not have been the same for what you feel for Tony, but I loved Riley.” 

 

“I realized it too late. I just, loved him too differently I guess and never wanted to see it.” 

 

* * *

If Steve isn’t in the workshop then he’s out on the balcony, on the rooftop, anywhere where he has open space to look at the sky.

 

WIth all these late nights he starts to understand even more. It used to be the cold that kept him up, the fear that if he closed his eyes again for too long that decades would go by and the next time around he really would have nothing left. 

 

As if the stars shift, as if they can’t stand how restless Steve has become, he watches them flicker.

 

* * *

  
He sits in the workshop, lights dimmed as his fingers run across the frame of the glasses. _ I’m in love with a ghost. _

 

He hasn’t put the glasses on again, not in three days. Not when he can’t sleep at night.

 

He tries to imagine what it would have been like to kiss Tony. He thinks it would have been like drinking honey whiskey, like swallowing a summer day at dusk, right when the air is starting to cool but still wraps you in warmth. 

 

Suddenly there's a small relief, a relief in naming something that was once nameless.

 

* * *

 

He wouldn’t call it brave, he doesn’t know what he would call it, but he slides the glasses on once more. 

 

Steve watches Tony in his workshop working on his repulsors. 

 

It’s almost like watching the moments from above, or an a television screen. Steve knows that it’s not real, can feel how everything in the sequence is a little bit off, like someone missed their cue. 

 

He can’t get too close to Tony, can’t feel the warmth of his skin. He knows the blue light and how it fades, how his hand will cut through the image. 

 

Artificial. That’s the word that comes to his mind. 

 

He’s trying to think about what this must look like, what they must look like. That Steve has nothing but longing eyes and hands that keep trying to reach, to touch. How he keeps having to remind himself to put them at his side, to keep his fists clenched and his knuckles white. 

 

He thinks that it wouldn’t look like romance, but instead some form of desperation. Maybe even some form of sickness. 

 

“Do you want to know what I’m doing?” Tony never offers so when he finally does Steve nods yes.

 

“How much do you know about physics?”

 

“Not a lot,” Steve steps closer, his hips almost pressed against Tony’s back as he watches, “but I’m a fast learner.” Close, close, close, but not close enough. Not close enough to watch the image disrupt.

 

Steve can feel the smirk growing on Tony’s face. “I’m sure that you are. In physics there are waves, waves will either construct or destruct.” 

 

Steve wishes that he would have understood then in that moment that they were similar, they would either construct or destruct. They weren’t a science book and there was no one to do a study on them, to tell them to be careful with their hands. 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her eyes weigh heavy as she looks down at Tony’s still form in the cradle.
> 
> “Come on, if you’re going to pull through this, now would be a great time.”

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”

 

Natasha has the urge to laugh but she pushes it down. Dangerous. She knows dangerous like the lines in her hands, like the scar along Clint’s left shoulder. She knows dangerous like the color red, knows it like the fall of empires and silent footfalls. 

 

“I don’t think this needs to be up for discussion, again.” Her arms cross her chest, more so in a final stance than an act of defiance. 

 

“As someone who knows very well what it looks like to see someone spiral out of control, Steve is very much headed on that path.” Pepper Potts has never been one to back down, something that Natasha has always admired her for. While Nat’s arms stay crossed, Peppers stay open, her back straight and chin held high. 

 

Sam sits on an ottoman, elbows on his knees while he watches the two women. 

 

“I kind of have to say I’m with Pepper on this one.” His eyes flick back and forth as Natasha stares him down. Sam puts his hands up, “just thought we were speaking our minds here about what’s best for Steve.”

 

“What’s best for Steve is what Steve decides.” 

 

“You’re saying this about someone who is exhibiting very Tony like behaviors and as someone who has,” Pepper pauses, realizing her mistakes, but quickly swallows down her words and continues on,” “had dealt with Tony almost every moment of his adult life I would have to say that sometimes what he thinks is best isn’t alway best. Do you want to let Steve go down that road?”

 

“He just needs guidance. It’s ok to grieve. When I had learned about my parents death, I collected a death toll so large that it’s what sent SHIELD after me. I would say he’s in a far better state of mind than most.” 

 

“I feel like you’re very calm about this.” Sam eyes Natasha, more calculating than questioning. 

 

“I have every reason to believe that Steve will be fine.”

 

“Oh and we what? Just keep pushing out the other Avengers without Iron Man and Captain America? Every day I field questions, every day-” Pepper pinches the bridge of her nose, lets out an exhale. “It’s fine. I’ll figure something out. The world needs Steve, Nat.” 

 

“And Steve needs us.” 

 

Pepper nods her head in resignation.

 

“Just, be careful. I don’t know what we would do if anything happened to Steve too.” There’s the root of it, pulled up from the ground and out in the light of day. She doesn’t say that she’s part of the reason Steve is like this, that she has given him the tools he needs to fall into a hole she fears he can’t crawl out of. 

 

“I won't let anything happen.” Nat doesn’t let Pepper fully leave the room before she speaks again. “Tony was Tony’s best protection. None of us could have done anything differently. He knew himself, his fighting styles, the rest of the teams, better than anyone. What happened to Tony was because he knew it was the only option.” It’s words for a soldier, something that Tony never thought he was. 

 

It’s Nat’s way of saying that maybe Steve isn’t the same kind of stubborn. That eventually she’ll be able to get through to him. 

 

“Is that a promise you can make?” Pepper doesn’t turn back when she asks it. 

 

“It’s already been made.” 

 

Natasha watches as Pepper leaves, listens to her heels hitting the marble floor until she reaches the elevator. 

 

“That was the most intense exchange I’ve ever seen. It was like the sun getting into an argument with the sun, not as explosive though. Maybe if the sunrise were to try to fight the sunset,” Sam stops talking when he sees Natasha staring down out him with an eyebrow raised. 

 

“That was not an argument. That was a productive discussion.” 

 

“You seem very confident and calm about all of this.” 

 

“If I wasn’t, then who would be?” 

 

“You know, this isn’t the end of the world.” Sam stands up, stretches his arms above his head.

 

“No, not our world, just Steve’s.” Natasha is already walking away, her words falling as quick as her feet. 

 

* * *

Not everyone knows what Steve has been doing. They just know he’s taken to the workshop, taken to tools and blueprints, late night coffee and oil stained shirts. It’s a mirror and more so haunting than anything. 

 

Natasha waits in the shadows, concealed and looking through the glass at Steve. Steve who is wearing a pair of glasses and sitting at a worktop with his hands gently tapping against the counter. 

 

The scene slowly changed, the workshop falling away to a new scene. Natasha tilts her head to the side as she realizes it’s the landing area Tony built for himself and War Machine. She lets out a low gasp when she sees Tony land, his armor falling away to reveal his eyebrows knitted together and his jaw tight as Steve comes storming outside.

 

“Stark! I thought that we were going to wait and go together? What happened to that plan?” Steve is in a thin cotton shirt, the wind blows past them both but the air doesn’t seem to bother him as he remains still looking at Tony. 

 

“New information developed and I didn’t have time to present it.”

 

“I’m starting to wonder why I bother asking you anything or expecting you to follow any semblance of rules.”

 

Tony keeps walking away and in towards the tower. “Have I ever told you about the summer when I was seven and my dad left for an “expedition”?” 

 

Important. This is a fixed point for them, only Steve failed to realize it at the time. This time he slows down, this time he really listens to what Tony is about to say.

 

“No, you never have.” His voice is quiet this time, instead of the, _‘I don’t have time for this Tony.’_

 

“I asked him what an expedition was and he told me the story of Lord John Franklin. Do you know who that is?” Tony has turned around now and is walking backwards and through the open door. 

 

Steve shakes his head now as he looks into Tony’s eyes. Tony who doesn’t even know that Steve is looking at him, really looking at him. 

 

“Lord John Franklin lead an expedition in 1845 across the Northwest Passage. He had this bomb ship that had seen war, anyways the ship's name was Terror which I took an immediate liking to as a kid. I tried to get dad to rename his ship Terror, which he refused to do. Might have had something to do with the fact that Franklin’s expedition was a failure and lead to cannibalism in the arctic. What I’m trying to say is, when I was a kid and my father told me about this, told me that his expedition was to brave the cold, to go out across the ice and the unknown to look for you, I kind of always hoped that he would never find you.”

 

“He didn’t.” 

 

“No, he didn’t.” Tony is already heading to the coffee maker, fingers going through the different pods to put in it. 

 

“But you did.” Steve’s voice is louder this time, not as loud as outside but more confident.

 

Tony stills, his back facing away from Steve as he is pressed up against the kitchen counter. 

 

“I personally wasn’t there but yes my expedition was. Do you know what the name of my ship was?” 

 

Steve knows the answer but he asks anyways, just to hear Tony say it one more time. “No.”

 

“Terror.” 

 

The scene fades away with Steve pulling of the glasses and squeezing his eyes shut. Natasha watches him with awe, her mouth slightly parted. She wants to reach out, to go through the door and ask him what the hell he’s doing, to tell him that he’s torturing himself. That Pepper was right and they’re all in way over their heads with this. 

 

Steve feels loss like aftershocks, feels hope torn away from him like fault lines and tremors. He wants to go back, to ask Tony why, to ask him why he kept looking for Steve long after his father stopped, long after 1991. He knows that he can’t hear answers to things he’s never heard but it doesn’t stop him from wishing. 

 

“If you didn’t want to find me then why did you keep looking?” He says it out loud to a ghost and Natasha feels her heart break through the glass, from a room away that might as well be an ocean. 

 

* * *

 

Maybe Natasha isn’t as good at covering up secrets as she thought. Not when she feels everything unraveling at the seams. If this life they all built together were held together by thread it would be the color red. Red for all of the beautiful and terrible things that it stands for. 

 

Her eyes weigh heavy as she looks down at Tony’s still form in the cradle. 

 

“Come on, if you’re going to pull through this, now would be a great time.”  Her hand lays across the cool glass and for the second time that day she hates glass, hates that it’s separating her from fixing problems, hates that she’s watching all of this like a movie, as if she isn’t even a part of it. 

 

“You’ve barely slept in the past few days. You’ve been taking on solo missions, you come in late, you don’t sleep. I don’t think I’ve seen you eat. You watch Steve like he’s on the verge of breaking.” Clint’s voice breaks through the silence. 

 

She stands up straighter, not turning around to look at him. “It’s a job.”

 

“Don’t call this a job, that’s not what it is. Don’t make it easier on yourself by saying it.” He steps closer to her, silently but she knows his footfalls like she knows her own and lets him move towards her. 

 

“That’s what it is, a job. Trust me, saying it doesn’t make it any better.” 

 

“What did you mean a moment ago when you said, ‘if you’re going to pull through this’?” He’s right behind her now, his chest pressed to her back but his arms still at his sides. 

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Natasha.”

 

“It’s just what people say.” 

 

“Nat.” He whispers in her ear, his hands around her arms, slowly moving them down to her wrists. 

 

She lets herself fall, lets herself fall like Rome, like Russia, with crumbling stone and great flames. 

 

“He’s not dead.” 

 

Clint is in front of her before she can open her eyes. 

 

“What do you mean? I’m looking right at him.”

 

“Look at what he’s in.”

 

“The regeneration cradle.” 

 

“Tony was right, to hide this in plain sight. To hide the truth in plain sight.” 

 

“Why haven’t you told anyone?” 

 

“He asked me not to. What if he doesn't pull through? What if he does and he’s not the same? I wasn’t going to be the one to get anyone’s hopes up.” She takes a step back from him. 

“Why would he ask this of you? Why would he even have a plan like this? Did you even ask him this stuff or did you just-”

 

“Whatever you’re about to say I highly suggest it never comes out of your mouth. If for one moment you think that I didn’t try to look at this from any other way then you’ve forgotten who I am. Why do you think Stark asked me of all people to be the one to keep this if it ever came down to it? I’m the only one here who wouldn’t have told him no. He was dead Clint! He was dead after that fight! He was dead when Steve broke his fingers! He’s barely alive right now, but I hope to whatever is out there every single day that he makes it through this.” 

 

He looks at her, takes in the shades of violet under her eyes, the way her hair is falling a little lifeless over her shoulders. 

 

“He was wrong.” 

 

“What?” 

 

“He was wrong. You’re not the only one that can help. Let me help you. Tell me what I need to do.”

 

This is how it goes with them, always a song and dance. Natasha supposes she wouldn’t want it any other way, but there’s peace in knowing that it always ends in support, in a hand guiding hand in the dark. 

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that he’s stopped he’s already thinking about Tony, thinking about seeing him again. Because at least when he has on the glasses, Tony is there, and Tony is smiling, and he’s happy. He’s happy, and Steve realizes that’s all he wants, to see Tony happy again, to see his smile light up a damn room because fuck if it doesn’t make Steve smile too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's super rare these days that i have any free time so i'm updating back to back while i have the opportunity, also because i wanted this chapter to be a little more steve centric

Steve thinks that he’s doing it silently, falling apart. 

 

He doesn’t realize it’s thunderous. 

 

He doesn’t realize that car horns are screaming Tony’s name and Steve is screaming right back, that New York still breathes him, that car exhausts are exhales and everything spells Stark, down to the sodium glow lamplight, down to the casting shadows, to the heavy beating heart in Steve’s still chest. The city misses him the way Steve does, with animal cries.    
  


* * *

 

He contemplates memories, things to pull up. He doesn’t know which ones to pick, which ones were more important than others. If he can ever say one weighed more than another. Looking back at them he sees them differently, he tries to remember Tony’s masks, the flickers of emotions he hid in seconds flat. 

 

Were the same memories that were important to Steve the ones that were also important to Tony? 

 

He thinks about all the of times he caught Tony off guard in the middle of the night, the way he would move around the house in the dim light of his electronics, how he would lean with his back against the counter while the whirl of the coffee maker filled the kitchen with noise. Or how his eyes would look at the spilled sugar grains on the counter and focus on them as if they were a portal to another world. That always seemed to be when Steve would wander into the kitchen at three a.m. and ask for a cup too. Sometimes they sat in silence, other times they talked about nothing in particular. 

 

In that place Tony was less reckless, less irresponsible. He became something stoic, something tangible. That if maybe Steve just slid his hands across the counter that Tony would have let their fingers lace together, that they would have been knuckle to knuckle and in the silence it would have made sense. 

 

Those moments were never about the job, those moments felt a little out of place, almost like they didn’t belong in their lives at all but those are the ones that Steve holds onto. 

 

Too afraid that if he goes to one of those moments, that he’ll allow himself to feel too much. Afraid that he’ll be a coward and never want to come back. 

 

* * *

He feels like he’s leaving pieces of himself behind. For every late night early morning run he takes a piece of himself falls into the cracks in the pavement, the undrank coffee that he pours down the drain flows with a part of him. 

 

They’re small but he can feel the adding up. 

 

* * *

 

He wakes up sweating, trembling, from a dream that he knows was about Tony, even if he couldn’t see his face. 

 

* * *

He runs, he doesn’t know for how long, but he runs. He runs until there are holes in the bottom of his shoes, until he can feel the concrete under his feet. He runs until he feels something other than the ache in his chest, he runs fast and hard until the harsh uneven asphalt tears away at his skin. 

 

It doesn’t matter, he thinks as he keeps moving, lungs burning as he breathes in the night air. He runs until he’s seen the same block four, five, six, times now. He runs until the other demons that are clawing at him have taken a backseat to the sweat running down his back. 

 

Steve leans back against a wall, his head lightly hitting the bricks. He’s ducked down a back alley, letting himself catch what little breath he lost. So maybe he's leaving blood on the pavement but it's nothing compared to the blood on his hands. 

 

It’s temporary, this only blocks it out for a moment. Now that he’s stopped he’s already thinking about Tony, thinking about seeing him again. Because at least when he has on the glasses, Tony is there, and Tony is smiling, and he’s happy. He’s happy, and Steve realizes that’s all he wants, to see Tony happy again, to see his smile light up a damn room because fuck if it doesn’t make Steve smile too. 

 

* * *

  
  


It’s Natasha who finds him, sitting in a chair next to the regeneration cradle. She sees the glasses concealed in his hand, the ones from the other night. Even to Natasha, who is trained to hold composure, feels herself itching to ask questions. Burning to hold the glasses but never daring to hold them to her own eyes. 

 

“Did you put these here?” He motions to the cluster of red poppies laying on top of the glass, carefully placed to look like Tony is holding them. 

 

“Typically they’re used as offerings to the dead.” She pulls up a chair and sits next to him, his eyes never leaving the vivid red petals as her eyes stay fixed on him. She knows that he knows this, she knows he knows the meaning of poppies, of how veterans wear them pinned to their chest. 

 

“A fallen soldier.” 

 

“Yes, but they also have other meanings.”

 

He turns to look at her this time, always willing to hear what she has to say. She sits on her hands and keeps her eyes fixed on the poppies this time. “They also stand for healing.”

 

It’s almost as if she falls in and out of focus, as if the edges around them fade out and come back into clear view. For a fraction he feels his world tilt as he looks back at the blood bright flowers. 

 

“I think they’re perfect for him.” Her voice is quiet as she shifts in her seat, leaning back and putting her hands in her lap. 

 

“They are. Thank you, for doing that.” 

 

“He was my friend too Steve, you weren’t the only one that lost him.” 

 

They sit in silence for longer, nothing but their uneven breathing to fill the silence. 

 

“I used to walk these streets, half empty. I would walk down the same roads I did decades before and I could barely feel a thing. I was wondering around aimlessly and then the Avengers came along, Tony came along, and I felt something again.” Steve lets out a small laugh, “yeah it was frustrating as hell sometimes but it was something.” He almost tells her that he didn’t want it, that when Fury kept coming to him over and over that he was refusing to adjust to his life. That he wanted to carry his burden his own way, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was. 

 

He remembers walking down the busy streets, sitting on the subway heading down to Brooklyn, and thinking if how he felt was how other people had felt coming back from the war. If he was experiencing it seventy years too late. 

 

When his friends came home did they still hear the sound of tanks across the wet earth? Did they still feel the cold on their fingertips even on the warmest of days? When they walked down a city street, did it still feel like a soldier's march? Every time the radio came on, did they still expect to hear the siren call of an air raid? 

 

It took him months to figure out that’s what it was, it took him another kind of battlefield to realize the emptiness inside of him. It wasn’t just that his friends were gone, or had already lived full lives, it was that there was nothing here for him. In a way he thought, that he was robbed of those things. Not necessarily living a life after the war, but not there to carry the same burdens as those he cared for. 

 

Before the serum, at times, he felt out of place, awkward and never just quite right, but at the end of the day he always had Bucky. At the end of the day there was always a couch that was too worn down to sit on, there was a game to listen to, and a story about down by the docks. Here? There was nothing here after the ice, nothing at all until he was back behind his shield. 

 

At night he still remembered the way that Bucky let out a deep breath, his head hitting the wall of the train car as he shielded himself behind crates while bullets flew past. At night, he wanted to remember anything but that, anything but the way that Peggy sounded fighting back tears. Anything but the way he sounded when he promised her a dance. 

 

It wasn’t just that, even if at first it was, then the nightmares started being replaced. They became more silent and not as demanding as the Avengers became his constant. The fighting, the petty arguments, they became a part of his routine, some sense of normalcy to fall into. The messy rooms, coffee stains, late nights and early mornings, debriefings, it was the feeling of playing with fire and not knowing how much it would take until he got burned. That the crescendo of those things started to feel like home.

 

Every day it felt like they were all pulling him back from the edge of that icy water. He no longer needed to feel like he was punishing himself for something that was out of his control, no longer felt like there was no need for him here in this time. 

 

“I’m tired of losing people Nat, all I’ve ever done is lose people. These,” Steve holds up the glasses to her, “these are the only thing keeping me together right now. There was so much I wanted to say to him, that I never got to say.”

 

“Steve, it-”

 

“Isn’t the same. I’m aware of that. I don’t just lose people, they get ripped away from me in really terrible ways, or I get taken from them. I owe all of you, I owe Tony too, and I just want to feel something besides this feeling that this is somehow my fault before I let him go.” 

 

“You don’t have to let him go, but what I saw the other day, it was, I don’t know what to say. As someone who wishes they could forget their past completely, I don’t even know if I would risk putting those on.” Natasha reaches out, her hand lighting resting on Steve’s shoulder. 

 

“What did you see?” Steve keeps his eyes focused on the glasses, his eyes reflecting in them. 

 

“It was just a conversation, it started out as a fight, but then again that’s how all of your conversations started. It was about his dad, about you.” 

 

A small smile plays across Steve’s features, “the expedition.” Steve allows himself a moment of relief that she didn’t witness one of Steve’s more pining filled memories. 

 

“Your lives were entwined well before you both ever knew it.”

 

“That’s why this is important to me. I feel like we’re still not finished. When I joined the Avengers, it was because the first folder that Fury gave me was Tony’s. I looked at him and, yeah I saw Howard, but I saw something else too.” He’s made himself vulnerable, cut himself open and handed the knife over to Natasha. 

 

She’s looking down at him now, standing out of her seat, it feels almost as if he’s at her mercy with the way his back is curved and his eyes are downcast. There’s a voice in her head yelling,  _ mission mission mission, it’s just another mission, _ while she fights herself,  _ this is Steve and he needs something better to hold onto.  _

 

She’s afraid of giving him hope that will just fall through all of their fingers. 

 

She jails the words she wants to say behind her teeth, locks them away in a room with all of her other secrets that she will never speak and hopes that one day Steve will forgive her when he finds out the truth. 

 

Her hand squeezes his shoulder a little too tightly, losing some of its reassurance, “we needed you too, we still need you.” 

  
She leaves the room, leaves him with his thoughts and trembling fingers reaching for a poppy.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's this really beautiful artwork of tony with poppies falling out of his arc reactor by beir that i've been obsessed with and it haunts all of my waking moments and its pretty much what i thought of when i wrote the scene about the poppies, you can look at the picture [here](http://beir.tumblr.com/post/146890640018/im-fine-it-always-hurts)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the team represented the seven stages of grief then Rhodey was anger while Steve remained denial.

 

He makes comparisons of their deaths. He wonders if his drowning was faster than how Tony died, with a blow to the head. It takes less than two inches of water in the lungs to stop the heart. And somehow that feels easier than this.

 

 

* * *

 

Maybe he’s starting to get it, that he’s not holding it together as much as he thought he was. Maybe this isn’t how he should be acting but he doesn’t know the difference between what he should and shouldn't be doing. He isn’t too sure he knows who he is supposed to be right now. 

 

Steve always used to be so sure of himself, of his beliefs and convictions. 

 

He knows that he didn’t lose these things over night, that his faith in himself has been pulled at the seams. That he can measure it in a body count.

 

“Maybe I don’t want to be Captain America anymore.”

 

“What do you mean?” He can see the fear behind Sam's eyes, the genuine look of disbelief. 

 

“It’s not just this, it was Sakovia, it was accumulation of things before it. It was SHIELD, it was that to people out there, this shield doesn’t always represent what I want it to. I fought nazis and now there’s people who want to compare what we do to fascism.” The graffiti of his cowl with the words in red come to his mind. 

 

“That kind of stuff is always going to happen. It should make you want to fight even more.” 

 

“It’s not just that Sam. I don’t know who I am without the shield anymore. I don’t know who Steve is. I think that’s why I was holding onto Bucky so much, on wanting to find him. I was thinking that maybe if I could bring him back then maybe he could bring me back too. I didn’t realize how lost I was until Tony was gone.”

 

Sam doesn’t respond right away, instead he nods his head in acknowledgement, his arms crossed over his chest as he makes slow circular motions in front of Steve’s chair. 

 

“I spent years in group sessions, years talking about loss, and I am coming up with nothing right now.” 

 

Steve looks up at Sam, at the way he can see hope leaving him. He can see it in the way his shoulders slump, in the furrow of his brows, and the folding and unfolding of his arms. 

 

“Not now, I wouldn’t leave now. One day though, eventually. When we get through this and things feel,” he doesn’t know the word, better? “Safe.” 

 

Sam lets out a breath, “you are like ninety-nine years old, I guess you can go into retirement.” 

 

He feels like he’s standing on Sam’s doorstep again, asking for help. He stands up and reaches out, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder. For this small moment, Steve feels like Steve again and he can’t help but think about the first time that Sam smiled at him. 

 

* * *

 

If he’s going to do this, keep seeing Tony, then he figures he needs to take some precautions. He can’t be down here all day, so he decides to start mixing up the routine. He’ll start going back to the training room daily, making more appearances around the tower. He thinks about what Tony did, how he would disappear for hours to days on end and only come out of his lab if someone came to check on him. Until he realized he was more likely to be left alone if he did things like come into the kitchen and just in general looking like he got some sleep. 

 

Steve almost laughs at the idea, that Tony was playing along just as Steve is about to. 

 

It starts slowly, he spends more time out in the open, a few small conversations here and there. He tells himself if that he keeps it up then maybe he won't think about everything else as much, but his memories are always tugging at the back of his mind.

 

* * *

 

It’s hard when he’s battling the feeling of wishing that the last time he had touched Tony, that he would have known it was going to be the last, that he would have had his palms open and it would have been a benediction. 

 

* * *

 

He’s still trying to save Tony like it’s his god given right. 

 

* * *

“What was Tony like when you first met him?” 

 

Rhodey raises an eyebrow, his mouth half open and turning up at the corners. “Do you really want to know?”

 

Steve nods his head.

 

“He was self destructive to no end. He hung out in alley ways with a cigarette between his lips and smoke calling strangers to him. He was dangerous, more so to himself than anyone else. It’s not what made him interesting. It sure as hell wasn’t the binders, the days on end where he wouldn’t sleep, or the days where I didn’t know where he was at all. He was hungry for something and I don’t think he ever really knew what. I liked Tony for the things that not everyone else saw. It was waking up to find him passed out on my couch because I realized he trusted me enough to be able to sleep. It was his brilliance, watching it unfold when he thought of something new, something that could help others. Always advancing, always moving. Having Tony Stark trust you was one of the greatest feelings in the world, once I had that, I never wanted to lose it. I always made sure we stayed friends, but he did too.” 

 

“Was he always,” 

 

“Self destructive? Oh definitely. It changed into different forms throughout the years until eventually the only thing between him and death was a suit of armor, and look at how that turned out.”

 

If the team represented the seven stages of grief then Rhodey was anger while Steve remained denial.

 

“It’s hard to realize that we aren’t invincible.” 

 

“Invincible? It’s making me reconsider a lot. Me? Sam? Clint? Natasha? Which one of us is next? Can you handle losing one more of us? Can the team handle another loss? We don’t know what we’re doing, we’re barely holding it together.” 

 

Rhodey grabs his jacket from the back of the arm chair as he walks out of the sitting room. 

 

Steve remains on the edge of the couch, hands folder together as he thinks about what Rhodey said. 

 

* * *

It takes hours but he’s still sitting there thinking of a rebuttal, something to say. “It could be any one of us.” Is what he should have said to Rhodey, something a bit darker and not like himself. 

 

He thinks he should have said this because he’s been thinking of D.C., of the fall of SHIELD, of Bucky’s ocean eyes looking into his own.

 

He can still feel metal pressed into his back, still feel Bucky’s hand holding him down while metal pounded into his cheek. 

 

If he were to embrace death again he thought that it was fitting that it was in an aircraft and at the hands of his best friend. 

 

Steve could tell you that it’s true, that your life comes to you in flashes before it ends. The first time was memories of his mother, of Bucky, always Bucky and his sly smile, and more so than anything the feeling of hope, how he wanted nothing more than to be anything than what he was. There were scatterings of Peggy and the overwhelming image of her crying, what she most look like with tears running to her red lips. 

 

The second time was different. Those images had taken a backseat to something burning. He thought of Natasha, of her strength but more importantly the softer side he had recently scene of her, of her ivory hands clutching a towel to her damp hair as she asked him about trust. 

 

A glimpse of Sam running past the reflection pool. 

 

He thought of Tony, and it wasn’t the arguments that he thought of, but instead of the kitchen table.  He thought mostly that he would miss the smell of coffee. He thought of his smile, not the one that the rest of the world saw, that was too tight, too wide and almost blinding. Instead of the smaller one, the one that didn’t show teeth but showed more in his eyes. His eyes, his eyes, his eyes, and the lines around them. With another blow to his face, he was conflicted in the gut wrenching feeling of loss and how he already missed Tony.

 

The water laid claim to him once more as he fell into the Potomac. 

 

He knows that was his turning point, what made him move back to New York, be back with all of the Avengers. He was always just a little bit lost without them. 

 

“It could have been me.” He says to no one but himself.

 

* * *

 

“I have an idea about the press.”  Pepper is all business as she slides her phone into the pocket of her blazer. 

 

“What’s the idea?” 

 

“Well the suits have been a decent substitute, except for a few small glitches here and there. Eventually they’re going to fall short, we’re running out of them and frankly they’re not as self sufficient as Tony thought. On top of that none of us know how to actually program them, especially if a larger scale event were to arise.” 

 

“What you’re saying is that you want someone to wear the Iron Man suit?” Rhodey is the first one to be shaking his head, to start saying no. 

 

“Kind of. The other day when we let one of the suits out it started failing out there in the air, if you weren’t there to fly by it would have fallen out of the sky and we wouldn’t have had an explanation.” 

 

“Sure we would have, we-” Sam starts to say but Pepper cuts him off. 

 

“The last time he went missing everyone thought he was dead. We’re not repeating that.” She doesn’t say that this time there won't be a surprise reunion, that this time there really is no coming back. “It doesn’t need to be permanent, just once or twice, until we can release what really happened.” 

 

“This seems like a really bad idea, still. I get it, I do, we can’t let anyone know he’s gone, not yet at least. I just wish there was another way.” 

 

“I was hoping since you’re the most experienced that you would be the one to do it. You know the suits, I don’t know why we didn’t do this before.” 

 

“Pepper, I get what you’re saying I do. It makes sense from a military standpoint but,” Rhodey can feel himself trying to push the words back down, how they burn coming up this throat, _ ‘I don’t want to be the one to do it’, _ “let me think about it.”

 

Steve can feel his talk with Rhodey from the other day pull between them. He can feel Rhodey wanting to say the things he said to Steve, and probably all of the things he didn’t say as well. 

 

“I’ll do it.” 

 

The room falls silent as everyone looks over to Steve standing in the doorway leaning against the frame. 

 

“If it’s only once or twice, like you say it is. Then I’ll do it.” He’s standing up straight now, his shoulders squared in what he is hoping is a _ ‘this is my decision’  _ stance. 

 

No one wants to say it, that this could be the thing to break Steve. He sees all of their eyes on him, their unspoken words and casting judgement. He knows what he must have looked like the past few weeks. The only word he can think of is undead. 

 

Natasha stands, her chair sliding across the tiled floor breaking the silence. But it’s Pepper who starts moving and gets to Steve first. 

 

Her hands grab his, putting them in between her own. In her heels her eyes match his, vivid and shining. From this close up he can see the nightmares she must have in the discoloration under her eyes. Her hands are soft, and a little cool to the touch. 

 

“If you think that you can do it, then we’ll do all we can to prepare you for it.” Her voice is quiet but firm and in a lot of ways she reminds him of his own mother, how she always found a way to be reassuring. 

 

“I want to do it, for all of you. I know I haven’t been present recently and it’s time I do something for the team.” It sounds so Steve Rogers that Steve almost believes it himself. 

 

He sees Natasha, tilting her head to the side, her eyes moving quickly before she stands back up straight and then is silently moving across the room while everyone starts weighing the pros and cons of Steve’s decision. 

 

“It’s settled. We’re going to do some practice runs here at the tower before we even think about letting him leave. If it doesn’t go well then we scrap this idea all together, but we have to trust that something is going to work.” 

 

There it is again, the flickering of hope.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one day this "fix it" fic for civil war is going to stop being so sad and have a happy ending


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tries to fall into nothingness, but that’s somewhere that he’s never been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for michelle who knows i was watching videos of bread being ripped in half instead of writing this <3

“What if I just unplug everything?” Clint gestures to all of the various wires connecting to the machines around the regeneration cradle. 

 

Natasha has her arms crossed as she glares at Clint. 

 

“What? I really think it could jolt him.” 

 

“I’m not taking medical advice from you.” 

 

“Come on, I’ve stitched you up before. I’m a pretty good doctor.” 

 

“You’re good for the battlefield where stitching up is quick and messy.” 

 

“I’m a little bit hurt about this but I see where you’re coming from.” 

 

They both continue to look down at Tony’s still form. Nat runs a hand over her face and then reaches for the control panel. “I’m going to try one more thing. This is the last step in the process, I didn’t want to do it too soon but I feel like it’s worth a shot at this point. He’s vitals are finally stable enough.” 

 

She moves her hands quickly, swiping formulas and body scans. Clint looks through the holographs and directly at the sharp slant of her nose leading up to her eyes. 

 

“I forget how good you are.” 

 

“At what?” She doesn’t stop moving, just keeps typing, her eyes flicking back and forth. 

 

“Everything.” 

 

Nat smirks, still not breaking her eyes away from the task at hand, but later, later they’ll be for him. 

 

“And you think now is the best time?” It’s not condescending when he asks it, just always wanting to know her opinion. 

 

“My concern isn’t about Steve getting hurt in a suit. It’s that I’m afraid he won't want to come back out.” 

 

* * *

Fireworks. 

 

That’s how Tony knew he was dreaming.

 

Steve was standing on the balcony, and ok Tony had dreamed this before but he liked this dream, he was ok with this. 

 

It was different though, not like last time. Steve’s eyes aren’t as bright, the blue looks washed out, and there are half plum circles under his eyes. 

 

Tony knows nightmares, he knows them better than the rivers in his hands, put there from years of work and tinkering. 

 

Tony holds onto the railing, trying to feel the cold metal pressing into his skin. Nothing. He winces, tries pulling a smile. 

 

“I feel like I should be happier to see you.” It sounds strange coming out, like his voice isn’t rattling his bones like it should. 

 

Steve opens his mouth to say something but Tony can’t hear what he’s saying, not when red and blue stars explode in the sky and the ground shakes with every one of them.

 

* * *

 

Tony knows nightmares, oh god does he know them. He meets Nightmare regularly, on a corner under a street lamp, always flickering and waiting to go out. He shakes Nightmare’s hand and lets him lead him down a dark alley. 

 

He knows nightmares in all the forms that they come in. He knows the more gentle ones, the ones that only leave you feeling a bit empty, all the way to the ones that shake you and make your heart race. 

 

He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but all he knows is that he can’t seem to get out. That there is something encasing him. 

  
  


* * *

“Of course God has a sense of humor.” 

 

Not a nightmare, not a nightmare. Not when he’s in his workshop and Steve is sitting on the couch, his arms on his knees as he watches Tony. 

 

“Why do you think that?” 

 

“He created me didn’t he.” 

 

Steve pulls his eyebrows together, “did you just make fun of yourself?” 

 

“I saw the opportunity before you did, and I took it.” 

 

Steve laughs, he laughs and it feels so real, it feels just like how Tony remembers, and he doesn’t want it to stop. He thinks he could listen to it for hours, listen to it like a sermon, listen to it like the waves crashing against the shore, listen to it like it’s the last thing he’s ever going to hear. 

 

He can feel it slipping through his fingers.

 

* * *

“I can feel them.” 

 

It’s not Steve that he’s looking at, rather a shadow of Steve. His face is blurred beyond recognition but Tony would know him anywhere. 

 

“Feel what?” 

 

“The nails in the coffin.” 

 

* * *

 

He tries to fall into nothingness, but that’s somewhere that he’s never been. 

 

* * *

He knows it by the way the window is cracked open, by the way the curtains are lightly blowing in the breeze. That something here is supposed to hurt. 

 

He realizes it then, the pre-world war apartment. The creak in the floorboards, peeling wild flower wall paper, does nothing to describe the emptiness of it. The feeling of something not belonging rises in him, of a moment not belonging to him. Everything feels off and no matter where he seems to be going none of it is fitting. 

 

He’s created this, the apartment. He looks outside at the buildings, the brick on them still bright red. This little borough in Brooklyn doesn’t belong to him, and it never will, and he immediately hates that this is where he came. 

 

* * *

“I refer you to the arteries and veins, also the chambers and valves.” The heart is an open thing. He can recognize the voice but he can’t place a name. 

 

* * *

Tony knows nightmares. 

 

He knows he’s in one when he’s watching the way the sun is setting over a desert mountain. 

 

He knows that mountain, just like how he knows what his blood looks like in sand. 

 

So when he watches the orange hues over the peak he knows it's a nightmare because he never saw the sun set there. He only saw the bright blinding sun during the day and the darkness of the cave. 

 

He was always thankful he never got to see beautiful things there like sunsets or the stars because he knew if he did then they would never be the same, just like him. That they would bleed differently for him and that they would be something he could never fix. 

 

The sky should be a trustworthy thing, it should give you shadows, tell the time of day, and create life. Not here, never here. Here it is a blazing thing that aches for death. 

 

The sun moves slow, but fast enough for his eye to catch, casting shadows across the valley. 

 

He knows that this place is where he decided that if he ever got out, that maybe his heart could handle something like that if it could handle a place like this, if it could handle shrapnel working it’s way to him with every breath he takes. 

 

That Stark men are made of iron and if that was the case then he would love with that too. 

 

* * *

In this dream he says to Steve, “how can I rest? I don’t care about losing sleep, how can anyone in this world rest when we really know what’s out there?” 

 

And in the dream Steve says, “I just want you to be able to sleep easier. I just want you to be able to not think of-”

 

“To not think of all of the lives that have fallen?” 

 

But it’s not just that, it’s that at night Tony’s hands are empty. At night he fights lonely. 

 

* * *

  
  


“Back in my day, airports were a sad thing.” 

 

Tony's dreaming a conversation they had, sitting in a VIP lounge while they waiting for a Stark jet to be fueled up. Instead of looking out the window at the Tarmac, Steve looks down below at the corridors of people running into loved one’s arms. 

 

Tony didn’t know what to say, he can remember that even now. 

 

“The people that left, you were never sure if they were going to make it back. Even if they did, they didn’t come back the same. After the serum, I wondered what it would be like when I would make it back. I didn’t have anyone to come back to, so I wondered what it would be like to carry my bag over my shoulder and have no one there waiting for me. I kind of liked the idea, that no one would see the weight of what it meant to be home. I only knew about it, guys sent back letters sometimes talking about how even on the streets of New York they were careful of landmines. I had a nightmare about it after that, being back home before the serum and stepping on a landmine.” 

 

Tony cleared his throat, setting his drink down on the bar. “What was the worst part of it?”

 

“That I couldn’t save anyone around me.” 

 

And Tony knows that nightmare like it was designed specifically for him, knows it like it’s a blueprint in the workshop, just another suit on the line up.  

 

* * *

He doesn’t remember it now, but he will. He will remember the moments leading up to his decision. He will remembering his heavy breathing, how he decided to shut off his com. He’ll remember the way it felt like he was tearing himself in half when he couldn’t tell Steve what was happening. 

 

He’ll remember the moments before the fight too, he’ll remember why he said he wanted to help. 

 

Will he tell Steve it’s because he wanted to see what he was like before this new life, before the war, before all of them? Will he tell him it’s because even if he couldn’t be with Steve then at least he would know that Steve was happy, that he no longer carried guilt like the heavens were on his shoulders. 

 

He’ll remember how he looked at Steve with the cover of his suit, hidden from Steve’s tactical eyes. He’ll remember how he felt the ache in his chest, how he was grateful that no one could see the longing in Tony’s own. 

 

It wasn’t just that he wanted Steve, he knew that for a long time now. It was that he wanted Steve to be happy, wanted him to be happy the way he had seen him on a few occasions. He wanted his laugh, and his smile, he just wanted to know that Steve had those things in his life again. 

 

He didn’t want their late nights anymore, not the ones where they didn’t speak about their nightmares. He would rather know that the tendrils of dark weren’t trying to lay claim to Steve, that something softer was in his mind.  

 

What he wanted was for when he said Steve’s name that Steve felt moved by it.

 

* * *

Pepper is talking about a plan and Rhodey is talking about the mechanics of the suit and no one seems to notice the determination in Steve’s eyes. 

 

“There are a few different models. The Mark 67 is bigger and will fit your size.” Rhodey bites back his tongue. He doesn’t say that the 67 is for the sixty-seven years it took to find Steve, that Tony built a suit after him. That when Steve had said, “take that off, what are you?” that Tony was already working designs in his mind. 

 

That Tony had made it for multiple reasons, not all of them to which Rhodey could understand but he knew that Tony had made it in hopes that one day Steve would understand. 

 

Pepper can feel the tension in the room, is starting to notice the way that Steve is standing in front of a case marked 67, his eyes taking in the details of blue against the red. 

 

“This suit wasn’t for Tony.” 

 

A pause. Pepper looks to Rhodey and bites her lip before nodding her head. “Yes.” Rhodey is moving to the suit now, to stand in front of Steve. “Are you sure you want to do this?” 

 

Steve looks down at Rhodey, and he feels the answer the way he’s been wanting to feel conviction again. He feels it like _ it’s the right thing to do _ . “Yes.”

 

* * *

  
  


Pain. 

 

It’s the only thing that seems to be registering. 

 

He can’t narrow down where it’s coming from, but he feels multiple points across his body. He can’t think of the names, but he feels them on the tip of his tongue. 

 

_ Focus, focus.  _

 

_ Where am I? _

 

He can’t recall anything, nothing outside of the nightmares. 

 

_ Open your eyes.  _

 

He repeats it. Says it more times than he can keep track of. His mind is trying to process too many things at once and can’t keep up. He’s trying to get his body to communicate, he keeps repeating until it works. 

 

Until he opens his eyes and all he sees is bright, blinding bright like the sun in Afghanistan, blurred around the edges. He can feel himself panic as he tries to come to. 

 

Noise is coming through muffled, blurred like it had when he first woke in the cave, like a bomb just went off. 

 

Suddenly he’s gasping, he’s clutching at his chest. He believes himself to be in the desert, he expects to feel sand and rocks digging into his skin but instead finds a smooth surface. The noises start to differentiate themselves, the quickening beep of the heart monitor to Natasha’s quiet voice. 

 

“It’s alright, it’s alright.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i was gonna do a whole steve being dramatic in the suit chapter but i realized all of you have suffered long enough and that i should let you know tony isn't dead and that's how i ended up with a weird tony dream chapter. anyways there will be a bit of steve being in dramatic in the suit because i can't pass up something like that


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s moments that are defined as crucial, where you see them for what they actually are and Steve supposes that he should have known that this was his and Tony’s.
> 
>  
> 
> That Tony corrodes the earth when he walks, leaves a path in his wake and this was the trail to follow, leading to the end.

There’s no one to tell him not to do it, not really at least. If it would be anyone he would have thought that it would have been Nat, but she ran off to who knows where and Steve, well Steve doesn’t want to be talked out of it, so he didn’t go looking. 

 

He could make a list of the reasons why he’s doing this. 

 

Standing in front of the wall of suits, with one suit just a bit bigger than the others, he starts thinking of the reasons. 

 

Of course he misses Tony, of course, of course, of course. It’s the things that he misses about him that he wants to grow within himself. 

 

The thing is, everything here reminds him of Tony, this is Tony’s home.  _ Their  _ home. This is where he learned the crinkles around Tony’s eyes, the gray hairs coming in at his temples, the sound of his footsteps across the floor, and how the sunlight filters through his eyelashes causing shadows across his cheeks.

 

The suit is just one more thing, another check on the list, and maybe he wants to make this theirs too. 

 

But mainly his reason is this, if he stops, it’s a way to finally kill him. If he doesn’t put on the suit, then Tony is really gone. 

 

Steve realizes a little too late that maybe he’s better at self destruction than stopping. All this time it’s been a monster manifesting.

 

What is the monster? It it time? Or was the monster before this distance? Dark creatures taking shape and lingering in the halls like a miasma of despair.   
  
  
  


* * *

 

 

_ “I don’t trust a guy without a dark side.”  _

 

Steve thinks this must be his, this maddening feelings of loss that consumes him. His dark side is a bit possessive, too stubborn and heading for a collision course. His darker side was his relentless search for Bucky, this gut wrenching guilt that still pulls at him because he doesn’t know how to make it stop. 

 

He makes a note to go back to that moment later, to get the glasses and tell Tony that he does have a dark side and that maybe Tony can trust Steve, that he could feel it between his ribs. 

 

* * *

  
  


“When was it?” Steve didn’t realize Rhodey was behind him, looking at Steve instead of the suits. Steve doesn’t look at him, he doesn’t need to, he knows what Rhodey means. 

 

“A long time ago, longer than I ever realized.” 

 

“So when?” His voice is a little more firm this time. It's not like when Steve first asked Rhodey about meeting Tony, or Pepper about loving Tony, those were gentler conversations. This is something sharper.

 

Steve tries not to let out a small laugh, the way that Rhodey and Sam are no bullshit and will push until they get their answers. 

 

“We were having a conversation, it was late, too late. Neither one of us could ever really sleep after a mission. Sometimes we would sit in the kitchen, sometimes in silence and sometimes it wasn’t. At the time I didn’t think the conversation had, I don’t know, any weight to it. I realized too late that I was wrong.” 

 

* * *

 

“Tell me a secret.”

 

Steve looks up startled, almost grateful for the dark, but he can still see Tony’s eyes across the kitchen table that seem to shine like beacons. “I don’t have any.” 

 

“That’s a lie. Everyone does. Tell me a secret.”

 

An exhale.

 

“What kind?”

 

“Any kind.”

 

“I’m afraid.”

 

“Of what?”

 

A pause.

 

“Mice.”

 

“Mice. You can’t be serious.”

 

“I am. Have you been down in the subway recently? They’re huge, in fact I should call them rats. They’re probably genetically mutated. Wasn’t there even a children's cartoon about that?”

 

“Ok, first off, it was turtles and they were taught by a rat, second-”

 

Steve is laughing and so is Tony because the answer itself was so Tony-like that Tony almost believed it.

 

Their laughter subsides and the room falls silent again. Maybe there’s something about the dark that lets telling secrets slide past lips feel comforting. That night made them both honest, and it was in the night where Steve learned the most about Tony, where he wasn’t afraid to talk about his scars. Once he talked about the people that he loved that never loved him back and when the dawn broke and Steve had finally gone to bed he couldn’t get the taste of the word unrequited out of his mouth.

 

“I am afraid.” Steve’s voice has dropped and his eyes are downcast at his hands which are resting on his knees. 

 

“Of what?” 

 

“Of not knowing what I stand for.” It’s not something he thought that he would ever say out loud, especially to Tony but there’s a comfort to the way that the dark seems to wrap around them, like nothing they say will leave this space between them. 

 

There’s moments that are defined as crucial, where you see them for what they actually are and Steve supposes that he should have known that this was his and Tony’s.

 

That Tony corrodes the earth when he walks, leaves a path in his wake and this was the trail to follow, leading to the end.

 

That this was the moment that said,  _ you have the power to ruin. _

 

* * *

 

It’s condensed, the way that Steve tells it to Rhodey. “That’s when I knew.” 

 

He hasn’t turned around yet but he hears Rhodey let out a deep breath. “Part of me wants to tell you not to get in that suit because if anything happened to you Tony would probably find a way to come back and kill me himself. But another part of me knows that Tony would have always wanted to see you in a suit, but he was also so afraid that you would say no.” It wasn’t just that Steve would say no, Steve can already hear the conversation in his head, how he thinks that Tony would have imagined it. If their conversation would have continued on that night at the table, Steve thinks that maybe Tony would have told him about the suit, that he would have said his biggest fear is Steve finally saying that all of this was too much and that Tony helped Steve lose himself. 

 

But that day never came and Steve can’t shake the overwhelming feeling of _right_ at the thought of letting himself be a part of Tony’s creations. 

 

“At night, we were different. In the beginning it was so formal, we barely spoke to each other. I counted once. Seven words in the span of two months. Once during the day Tony slammed a door so hard I could feel it in my knuckles. I didn’t want that anymore, I guess we both didn’t. I think that’s how the night time conversations really started.” 

 

“Ok, well if we’re really doing this I just want to go over a few more things.”

 

* * *

It’s over an hour later and Steve is alone again, this time his left hand has on a glove from the suit. He flexes his fingers as he looks down at the blue alloy

 

He tells himself it’s similar to holding the shield, except it isn’t, his whole hand is encased but he reminds himself that he’ll get used to the weight of it. 

 

Steve hits the button that Rhodey showed him with a deep breath and a steady hand. The rest of the suit comes to him in pieces, quickly encasing him until the front of the suit slams shut. He blinks a few times as his eyes adjust to the panel in front of him. 

 

“Welcome Captain Rogers.” FRIDAY is quiet in his ears as he starts scanning the workroom, reading the analytics at the sides of the helmet. 

 

There’s more inside the suit than he thought, it’s also not as dark as he had once imagined. If he moves his shoulders a little too high he can feel them touch the suit. It's not the same as the time he just put on a helmet, this is different. His mind keeps falling back to when he first asked FRIDAY about what happened that day and how Tony decided to keep fighting. Steve regrets everything he ever said about soldiers, everything he ever said about war and the comparisons he made to the team. He hates the poppies he put on top of the cradle, he hates the whispered words to Nat at Tony's side, he hates the first time he ever met Tony the most because even back then he pushed Tony over the edge. 

 

Immediately he realizes that it was a mistake, how it feels as if the suit is getting tighter, the air getting warmer and making it harder to breathe. He can’t help but imagine the blows that Tony took, how it must have felt with the metal caving in on him and crushing him. 

 

“Captain Rogers, it appears that you are having an anxiety attack. I recommend we try to regulate your breathing.” 

 

_ Stupid, stupid, stupid. _ He can’t help but think of his determination to find Bucky, of the sand that was beneath their feet kicking up in the air as Tony went toe to toe with Rumlow. _ If Tony had just stayed behind, if I was the one in his place- _

 

FRIDAY forces an override on the suit and flips the mask open allowing air in. Steve doesn’t realize he is gasping for it as he falls to one knee. 

 

“Captain Rogers,” her voice is coming from the workshop this time but it’s cut off by another.

 

“Do you have a death wish?” His voice is harsh and breathy, his vocal cords still tender from not being used. Tony is gripping onto a table, his fingers knuckle white as he tries making his way to Steve. 

 

And no it can’t be real, this isn’t real. This is a hallucination, Steve’s grief manifested and taking its final form. He doesn’t know the last time his knees ever trembled and he thinks it must have been before the serum, it must have been decades ago, but he feels them shake as if tectonic plates are colliding underneath him. 

 

He reaches up for this eyes, thinking that somehow he must have blacked out, that he grabbed the glasses and doesn’t even realize it. His fingers reach but they collide with skin. 

 

His other knee hits the ground. 

 

“No, no, no.” His voice is breaking, cracking under the pressure, it’s partially the suit and partially weeks of, months of things he never said standing in front of him. “I thought,” He swallows but his mouth is dry and his tongue feels like sand, “I thought I could be what you wanted.” 

 

There’s no glasses but Steve thinks this must be a nightmare, he remembers stories like this from the war, stories that drove men mad. 

 

Tony is still moving towards him with determination and Steve feels a tear roll down his cheek, his eyes pinched shut as he imagines a ghost walking towards him. 

 

“What I wanted? When have you ever cared what I wanted?” Even in death Tony is still fighting him only Steve no longer has the energy. 

 

Tony’s limbs are shaking from not being used, not fully healed from the cradle as he bends down in front of Steve who still hasn’t opened his eyes.

 

“I can’t do this, I can’t keep imagining you. It’s destroy-”

 

Tony doesn’t let him finish, he’s already reaching up to click the button that takes the suit off. His fingers are clumsy as he reaches for it and the pieces of the suit fall off of Steve ungracefully, loud as they clatter to the floor. 

 

“Shhhh, don’t say it. Whatever it is you were trying to say, don’t say it.” His voice still sounds unworked, the way it does after someone’s been sick or they spent the night before yelling. Steve doesn’t think he’s ever heard it like that before and is starting to wonder how he’s imagining it. 

 

Fingers grip around his wrist, and Steve would know that feeling anywhere. 

 

He opens his eyes to see Tony’s looking back into his. He looks down quickly at Tony’s hand around his wrist and see’s bruised fingers gently touching him. Steve recognizes it as the hand that he held in the hellicarrier, how he gripped Tony’s fingers too tight. He moves quickly as he carefully picks up Tony’s hand and pulls it closer to him. He’s examining Tony’s hand like it’s his god given right and Tony doesn’t stop him, doesn’t stop him when Steve is memorizing every broken finger, every discoloration of plum and violet, every line in his knuckles, not when Steve pulls Tony’s hand to his lips and kisses the knuckles so softly it feels lighter than butterfly wings. 

 

* * *

 

Natasha watches quietly from the doorway and for the first time in her life she wonders if this is what it looks like to see a shift in a fixed point. If this is what it looked like the first time she met Clint and she can’t help but think that it does.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry im like this but thank u for sticking with me


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Natasha notices how Tony keeps refusing to use Steve’s name, she makes a note of it but says nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i personally was going to fight this chapter, sorry for the excruciating delay, i hope this chapter kind of makes up for

Everything hurts, the hard floor is digging into Tony’s knees, he can feel his body wanting to shake, can feel nerves and muscles overworking themselves but he can’t bring himself to move. Not when his hands are in Steve’s and Steve’s eyes are closed with his lips pressed to Tony’s knuckles like they’re the most delicate thing he’s ever held. 

 

He can’t wrap his mind around what’s happening.

 

Gently, gently. His mind flips through memories, his hands trying to associate this touch with another. He thinks briefly of his mother’s hands guiding his own across piano keys but tosses the memory aside. That was a different kind of tender. 

 

How unfathomable all of it is, this moment to exist in the universe. Decades are stretched between them and Tony tries to run calculations on percentages on the likelihood for this moment to be existing but numbers aren’t pulling up and his mind is a haze. He blames his fumbling on coming back to life, on being in a coma, and spending his first waking moments fighting his way to Steve’s side but he knows that it's more than that. 

 

Steve’s lips are light against his skin still, warm breath ghosting across his hands as Steve is pulling both of Tony’s hands to him,    
  
  


* * *

 

Steve feels like he’s being unfolded, the notches in his spine coming undone as the weight of him falls. He’s delirious with it. Rushing, fleeting, tidal wives. The plane crashing into the ice but never being frozen, Steve is trying to understand what he’s feeling and he believes it’s what he’s been waiting for. To feel like he’s coming home. 

  
  


Even something like this still seems impossible, the notions in timing, that Tony would be grasping his hands, heat against heat before Steve was about to do something reckless. 

  
  


He had been holding it between his ribs, all of their late nights, memories that he didn’t want to let go of. He thinks that they both must be too scared to move, but Steve knows that there’s no way that Tony could be thinking what Steve is, that he no longer has to wonder what the curve of Tony’s spine would feel like under his hands. 

  
  


This isn’t a dream or the glasses, there's no suit of armor between them.  _ What are you without the suit? _ God, everything, everything. 

 

This is Tony, broken bones and heart shaped bruises, knees on the ground and Steve can feel apologies trying to spill through his teeth like waterfalls.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry for all of the things I said. I’m sorry for the first time that you died, for the wormhole, and I’m sorry it happened again because-”

 

“Sir, your heart rate is elevated. Due to the nature of the situation and your condition I have alerted Ms.Romanoff.” 

 

It’s enough to break whatever is happening between them. Tony is clutching at his chest and Steve’s hands are falling to his sides as Natasha urgently comes into the room and to Tony’s side. One hand rests on his back while the other slides under his arm as she helps him off of the floor. 

 

“I know I let you come in here but when FRIDAY says you need to go back to the infirmary I’m going to listen.” 

 

“As much as I would like to stay and finish this conversation I would prefer not to die again.” It quick how all of them fall into battle stations, masks on their faces as Natasha takes Tony out of the room. 

 

* * *

 

“What the hell just happened?” Tony sits down on the edge of a medical table as Natasha starts rummaging through a drawer for blood pressure cuffs. 

 

“You’ve been gone for a while and-”

 

“When I came to, all you said was Steve,” There’s an obvious intake of breath after he says his name. It almost feels to intimate on his tongue. “Cap, was about to do something stupid and that it would only work if I stopped him, considering the whole being dead and all. What you didn’t say was that he was full on about to strap himself into a suit of armor and pretend to be what? Me?” 

 

“If you don’t take a moment to properly breathe, I am going to get a real doctor down here and make sure you’re confined to this room for a month.” She starts undoing the cuff to put around Tony’s arm, a small smile playing at her lips. 

 

“I’ll have you know that I haven’t seen in a doctor in years, been doing all my check ups at ho-ow, hey!” Tony looks down at the cuff that is expanding as Natasha pumps air into it.

 

“What? Just checking your blood pressure.” 

 

They both know she squeezed a little too hard.

 

* * *

 

It’s not like Natasha let him go running out into the tower to make a grand entrance, there was some bickering, Nat getting FRIDAY involved, and finally a threat before she said she needed to tell everyone first before she let him go galavanting around the place. 

 

“What if,” Tony takes a breath, his hands gripping the edge of the medical table as he looks down at the floor, “what if I don’t want them to know that I’m back.” 

 

Natasha looks confused, something that doesn’t cross her features often. She pauses at the door, turning around to look at Tony. 

 

“I don’t understand, this is what you wanted. I fought with my morals about using the cradle, and I did it for you.” 

 

“Ok, ok, it’s just, I’m a bit freaked out and-”

 

“You don’t want to see Steve again.” 

 

“That’s not it, I just don’t want to be left alone with Rogers.” 

 

If Natasha notices how Tony keeps refusing to use Steve’s name, she makes a note of it but says nothing.

 

* * *

 

In the end, it’s Rhodey that gives her hell.

 

“What were you thinking? What if something happened-” Rhodey is pacing around the living area, hands on his sides.

 

“Worse than him being dead?” Nat grabs the back of the couch, her fingers pressing into the cushions as she stares Rhodey down. 

 

Rhodey stops in his tracks. “You know what I mean.”

 

“I do, and if you think for one second that I didn’t think of every outcome then you’re wrong. This was something Stark had asked me for a long time ago because he knew at the end of the day I could set aside whatever was conflicting me inside and get the job done.” There’s a jab at her own words, her past biting at her heels as she thinks of all the similar words that have been said to her before. 

 

“And if everyone’s deep rooted problem of this really was,  _ “Why didn’t Tony ask me?” _ , then I really need you to let that shit go. This man has gone through hell and that is not going to have to be something he answers after coming back.” 

 

There’s unison head nods as everyone looks at Nat. 

 

“So what do we do next?” It’s Sam who asks, sitting on an ottoman, his hands folded between his knees. 

 

“He needs to rest a little more but after that it should be let ok to have people see him one by one.” She doesn’t tell them about her haste to wake him up and the slow moving delirium that followed as she watched Tony fall to his knees to protect Steve. 

 

“I have so many questions.” Rhodey says as he takes a seat, leaning back into the cushions. 

 

“I would give you answers but I’m sure you would be happier reading the file Tony had come up with in case if this ever happened and the report that I kept while I was watching over him in the cradle. I’ll print it out for you so you have something to hold in your hands and crumble up if you get mad.” She raises her eyebrows at him as he shoots her a non threatening glare. 

 

Natasha knows that it’s more familiar to James to be holding an actual file, to have documents to go through. 

 

“Fine.” He says it like he doesn’t want to read it but Natasha knows this is why she was picked, she’s good at defusing situations, and for all the times she may have disagreed with Tony she won't let him down on this. 

 

* * *

 

It’s Nat who ends up calling Pepper, her voice low as she holds the phone close to her cheek. She can hear every sharp intake of breath that Pepper takes. There’s no accusations, no reprimanding, just, “I’m on my way.” 

 

When Pepper lands she spends a lot of time straightening his pencil skirt, adjusting the hem and doing anything at all to keep her hands busy. 

 

Natasha watches her with arms crossed over her chest.

 

“I wanted to tell you, I wanted to tell you every single day.”

 

Pepper finally looks up, really looks at Natasha this time. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t put on a brave face. “I know. I don’t know what I would have done if I was in your situation. It’s better this way though, how it happened I guess. If something had happened we would have never been the wiser.” This time she forces a thin lipped smile, this time her eyes start to water. 

 

“Hey, hey,” Natasha reaches out, her hands feather like as she grabs hold of Pepper’s.

 

“I’m so-”

 

“Shhhh, no don’t say that. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

 

Pepper lets out a deep breath and collects herself. Her cheeks are red from fighting back tears. Her fingers grip around Natasha’s, tighter this time as she looks her in the eyes. “I’m glad it was you.” 

 

* * *

 

Steve hasn’t moved, he feels almost catatonic. He can still feel Tony’s hands in his, their fractures and bruises. He licks his bottom lip, remembering how his lips ghosted over Tony’s skin, he tastes salt. It’s not the same taste as having blood in your mouth, that’s more copper tasting. It tastes more like the ocean, but the waves aren’t soft, instead it’s like getting too much water in  your mouth as you take gulping gasping breaths.    
  


This isn’t strategy, this isn’t the battlefield, there is no need to collect intel or give orders. Steve can finally be Steve, a chance for the shield to fall away. 

 

It’s a work in progress but he tries to think about who he is now behind the blue, and try to sort through everything he's feeling.

 

He can’t help but to think about his life when it was unremarkable, when he was just a boy who wanted to be taller, wanted to be faster, wanted to be able to keep up with the other kids at school, but those things seem far away and if he didn’t hold them so close to his chest at times he would think that they weren’t even his own memories. 

 

When he sees Bucky that life comes back to him tenfold, it crashes down around him and it’s like he’s that boy all over again. Or he thought that's what it was like, a piece of his childhood standing before him.

 

He realizes now, looking down at his hands that have held Tony’s that he no longer wants that life. That he doesn’t feel the need to keep who he used to be so engraved in him, almost like it was the only thing supporting him. He doesn’t need that when there’s people like Sam, and Nat, and Tony. He doesn’t have to hide his key under a rock and his shirt collars are no longer too big because he wore his father’s clothes and how he had to knot his ties a little too tight just to keep the shirt in place. The kitchen window with the thin cotton curtains has long been gone and Steve no longer wants to be a collection of memories, he didn’t realize he had become more like a mausoleum and less like a museum.

 

Back then he thought that he was too thin, not much to look at and _ it’s inside what matters _ , and maybe he needs to fall back on that, on the thought of this is something that he was meant for. This is how daylight clings to him. 

 

* * *

It’s not that Steve goes looking for him. Ok, he does. It’s not like it’s hard when half of the place is made of glass, and there’s limited choices about where a man who escaped death had would be.

 

He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, if he’s going to say anything at all but Steve sees Tony sitting on a medical examination table, his hands running across his knees. There’s no one in the room with him and Steve takes a moment to let it all sink in. He leans back against the wall, concealed in shadows as he looks over the parts of Tony that still haven’t healed, the yellowing bruises and still tired eyes. 

  
Steve thinks to himself that even after all these years, he doesn’t know how to do things in halves. He thinks he’s like Tony in that way, they either love something completely or they don’t like it at all. There are days where he wishes it wasn’t like this, that he could find an in between, but at this moment he’s glad that it’s completely, that looking at Tony he feels it fully and not in fractions.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alaina why do you have so much natasha in a stevetony fic??? well maybe for the same reason that scarjo keeps taking these terrible action roles, because we're both desperate for a black widow movie


End file.
